Harry
by sirius-dorkis010
Summary: Hogwarts is a prestigious college for boys in a non-magical world, and Harry runs things. When the new biology professor becomes a nuisance, Harry comes up with a plan to get rid of him and might bring himself down in the process. AU, OOC Harry, HP/SS.
1. I Do Count the Clock That Tells the Time

**Title:** Harry

**Chapter:** Monster

**Rating:** M

**Warnings:** Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, basically. AU, OOC/Harry. I think warnings can sometimes ruin the story, so I won't post them all but if you really want to know just private message me or review.

**Pairing:** Harry/Severus

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the Harry Potter characters and I promise, I'm not making money off of this...wish I could, though! Oh, and I'm not Shakespeare, though I like to pretend sometimes.

**Credit: The plot for this story was the brain child of fanfiction author G0tik4.**

**NB:** Please don't hesitate to give constructive criticism or be in contact with me to ask questions and things like that. That's probably one of the best things about writing fanfic. Also, this is my first Snape/Harry story.

**Summary:** Hogwarts is a prestigious college for boys in a non-magical world, and Harry runs things. When the new biology professor becomes a nuisance, Harry comes up with plan to get rid of him. Who else will go down with him?

* * *

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk to hideous night;

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer's green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,

Then of thy beauty I do question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet XII, William Shakespeare.

* * *

"Harry."

It was the way they all did that, the way they said his name, that called up a madness he only knew in moments like these. The way they could twist that godforsaken name to make it sound exhausted, disgusted, hopeful, and pleading all at once. As if to say please stop being such a burden, as if to say wake up. And that was when the monster surfaced. He could trace these sittings across his pockmarked life and connect them, like craters in the dusty face of the moon.

He threw an apple up, up, into the arms of the air and hoped that he caught it with ease and- ah, yes, he does. The fluorescent lights reflected off its shining green skin.

"Are you listening?" she asked. She glanced behind her to the man she had come with.

"Yes," he responds, blinking once and smiling so sickly sweet.

"How is Hogwarts treating you?"

Harry's sugary smile stuck like he thought it might and he looked to the side. "It's absolutely sublime. But I'm curious, why are you asking?" He turned back to face her. He glanced down at the name on her visitor's badge, neatly printed. "Hermione? It's not like you care, really."

Hermione seemed unused to this treatment. _She's new. _Brilliant.

"The- they sent me as a substitute. Audrey wasn't available to come in to check on you-"

"I'm grateful for that at least, she's a bitch." Harry's smile morphed into a smirk. "But you seem sweet."

That caught her off guard. Perfect.

"So I'm not going to give you a hard time. Just tell Audrey that everything is fine, and that I'm not a baby, so I don't need looking after every half hour. I'm not on drugs, I'm not selling drugs, and I'm not an alcoholic." His anger simmered dangerously beneath his smile, and he hoped Hermione could feel its heat. "And next time you come around here, just skip the stupid questions, because you're wasting your breath." He paused. "Don't become one of them, Hermione."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, her eyes widening slightly and her brow furrowed.

Harry pursed his lips. "Never mind. Just tell Audrey to fuck off."

"Well..." Hermione appeared to be summoning up all of her bravery. "It's just that considering your past...we're social workers, you know, we only have the best intentions."

Harry's brow creased and he tilted his head sideways. Fear flit in and out of her eyes, and he loved it, tasted it.

"And what, Hermione, do you presume to know about my past?"

"Just-um," she stuttered.

"Poor orphan boy Harry, poor abused Harry, oh, he must be so troubled," he mocked. "But what you read in my file isn't who I am. So, don't," he glared, "don't you dare assume you know me because you read my file. It means nothing. Do you understand that?"

She nodded, not looking at him. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, and something deep in him moved.

"Good," he said, grabbing his rucksack, and taking a bite out of his apple. The man sitting behind her watched his lips and his mouth sucking at the fruit. He turned and left, amused

* * *

They shivered like ants when he passed, he could feel it. Their eyes turned sideways as they tried to casually continue their conversations, but they didn't dare to make eye contact. They feared him, they loved him. Beauty makes any crime forgivable.

He made his way into the courtyard and fell gracefully onto the grass near his gang.

Draco, who was just laughing at something, looked at Harry, his smile taming. "Nice of you to join us. Where have you been?" He seemed paler than usual in the sunlight.

"None of your business," Harry said, smiling back, but meaning it. "So, what's new?" He let his gaze linger on Theo, who was staring blindly at him.

"Apparently there's a new biology teacher. Hear he's a pain in the arse," said Blaise, laying languidly along the grass.

"We'll beat it out of him," Harry said only half joking, and they all sniggered a bit.

"What are we doing tonight?" Blaise said, taking out a cigarette from a silver carrier and lighting it.

"We just got to school," Theo said in a low voice. Everyone ignored him.

"I say we get completely boggled, " Draco said. Blaise blew smoke in his face and he coughed and waved at it, annoyed.

"Boring," Harry returned immediately, and anyone who was watching could see the blush creeping up Draco's neck.

"Let's play a game," he said, smiling slyly to the sky.

The boys pestered him about the game as they moved to get to class, but Harry simply ignored them, the smirk forever donned by his lips quirking at some of their guesses.

"Spin the bottle?" Theo tried.

"Juvenile."

"I Never?" Draco put out. Harry gave him a look that was answer enough.

Much of the day was spent in that manner, and when Harry grew tired of the inanity of it all, he barked at them to shut up and they fell silent with a quickness that soothed his heart.

It happened in their fourth class of the day, as Severus Snape entered the room.

He said nothing at first, just stood and leaned back against his desk at the front of the class and waited. It took a few minutes, but his presence still seemed to suck the conversation out of the room with a rapidity that made even Harry envious.

Just looking at him, Harry didn't think much. He had black hair, so black Harry was reminded of crows, that hung around his face. He had eyes and clothes to match.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," were his first words, and the sound of his voice changed everything. It was a long, deep purr that Harry could imagine would be quite delicious in a more intimate setting. Harry recognised his desire the moment it dropped down inside of him, and as the man moved and spoke, it slowly grew and took hold of him.

"After many years of teaching and having once been a student myself, I understand that many of you may not care about the subject of biology in even the slightest. I was once your age, I know that there are many other points of interests to your growing, hormonal bodies." He paused, and moved his hand, stippling it on top of the desk and looking away with disinterest. "However, let me be very clear; I do not care," he said very slowly, "I will not accept unexcused absences, late assignments or laziness."

Someone snorted in the back.

The man's eyes snapped to the perpetrator. "Something amuses you?" There was a small, strange, smile on his face.

Ron Weasley's laugh died in the air. "No," he said after a moment. He glanced at Harry and Harry gave him a disdainful look.

"Which brings me to my next point," the teacher continued and turned his head back to the class, a single finger riding the line of the edge of the desk and inwardly, Harry drooled a little. "I will endeavour to earn your respect and I highly suggest that you endeavour to earn mine. I will not tolerate disrespect. And if that is the route any of you choose, or you do not like my rules, you can leave my classroom. Now, in fact," he finished shrugging one shoulder.

Nobody dared to move an inch, much less leave. Most didn't move because their parents watched their marks too closely for them to risk it. Some were too scared this new teacher would bite their heads off. Harry didn't move for completely different reasons.

"Excellent," he said, and moved off the desk and toward the blackboard. "You can call me Professor Snape. Now please, open your books to page three-hundred-ninety-four."

* * *

"What a wanker!"

"I will not tolerate disrespect!"

"God, he's going to be a pain."

Everyone gathered in the upperclassman common room that night to complain about the new addition to Hogwarts's staff.

Harry took the best seat in the room, laying on the couch in front of the fireplace with his feet in Theo's lap, watching everyone with a smile on his face. Gregory Goyle came into his field of vision, putting his elbow on the mantle and saying in a gruff voice, "We have to do something about it. I think I actually learned something in class today."

Everyone laughed, and the murmur of soft conversation overtook the room. They had done this before, gotten a teacher they didn't like sacked. Last year it was Professor Callow, who'd sent out disciplinary complaints to the parents.

Harry moved his socked feet around in Theo's lap and made sure he brushed against something sensitive. He could hear Theo's gasp even over the buzz of laughter and conversation around them.

Blaise spoke loudly over the noise. "No, but really," he smirked. "We could do something."

"My father could put in a complaint with the board," Draco mused.

Harry snorted. "God, Draco, you have no imagination." Everyone laughed more than they really needed to, of course. Harry closed his eyes and let the satisfaction of Draco's pink cheeks wash over him.

"We could get him sacked for something."

"Like what?"

"Racism?" Everyone looked at Blaise.

"We did that last year," he said. "Besides, I'm not playing the discriminated against black boy part again," he finished with disgust.

"Abuse?"

Harry shook his head. "It'd be hard to get concrete proof of that."

"What about...molestation?"

Harry grinned. "Theo! That's brilliant!" Theo beamed proudly.

"So," said Zacharias Smith, a doubtful look on his face, "a few of us talk to Dumbledore about how Snape's creepy and touches us? He'll deny it."

"We have to seduce him," Draco said, a distant look in his eye.

"We? One of us," Blaise clarified. Draco's brow furrowed. "Obviously," he murmured darkly.

"But who?" Smith pondered aloud, and in seconds everyone's eyes were on Harry.

"Me?" Harry said, feigning innocence, watching the fire's light dance on the polished surface of the coffee table. He considered the pros and cons of going ahead with their plan. Harry would get to fulfill his desire for the man and get rid of him cleanly. Snape represented almost everything he loathed in authority figures. And it'd be a good reassertion of his own authority. God, how easily we become what we hate most.

He breathed in the silence around him deep, and opened his mouth to give an affirmative, and for some reason unknown to him, said something else instead.

"I'll think about it."

* * *

The next morning in the Great Hall, Draco cut his toast with knife and fork delicately. "Wait," he said, "we didn't play your game last night!"

Harry licked a finger very indelicately and finished glaring at Weasley. "We were preoccupied."

"Well, what was it?"

"I'm still not going to tell you," Harry smiled, filling his mouth with spoon and porridge. Blaise rolled his eyes but asked anyway, "Give us a hint."

"Something naughty," he answered mischievously. "But if we take up this new project, we won't have time for games..."

"You'll certainly be very busy," Blaise smirked.

"If I even decide to do it."

"Which you will, of course. Too much fun for you not to," Draco said. Harry smiled back and lost his appetite.

Later in class, Harry stared at Snape's trousers, trying to find a crease and wondering how big he was.

"Mr. Potter?"

"Yes?" Harry met the man's eyes for the first time.

Snape pursed his lips and continued his "brief" lecture on molecular biology. Harry recognised it as a warning to pay more attention and while it irked him, it made his desire peak low in his belly. He was slightly disturbed and curious at his attraction to the man, seeing as he'd been with much handsomer a person. But there was just something so appealing about him...

When class ended, Harry heard his own name called behind him in that dark, vivid voice.

"Yes, Professor?

Snape waited till everyone left the classroom. Weasley pushed passed him and Harry saw red, his teeth grinding, already planning. He saw Theo glare at the back of Weasley's head.

"You were drifting off during class today."

Harry was startled. He'd forgotten Snape was there.

"I apologise. I'll try not to let it happen again, sir" Harry said, choosing the polite route. Snape's face was blank as he looked at him, so it was impossible to read the man.

"Is there any particular reason you chose not to pay attention?" It might have sounded antagonistic coming from anyone else's mouth, but Snape's moved around the words too indifferently for it to mean much.

Harry thought for a moment before responding, wondering who to be. Polite Harry? Innocent, oblivious Harry? Clever arsehole? Monster?

A combination of sorts? "I don't really think that's any of your business, sir," Harry said, quicker and with more feeling than perhaps he'd meant to.

Snape hummed and stoked the fire between Harry's eyes. "Sounds like trouble," he replied.

"I don't know what you're talking about." There was a pause. "If there's nothing else, sir, I-"

"I went to school with your father."

Harry blinked. Suddenly, it was like Snape had blown a balloon into his throat.

"S-sorry?" Harry hadn't stuttered like that since he was eleven.

"Your father attended this school, did he not? James Potter?"

Harry had never met anyone who'd known his parents, except...he closed his eyes. He'd never even heard or spoken those names aloud.

"How-how did you know that?"

"You look remarkably like your father," Snape said, a dark look in his eyes. "But you have your mother's eyes. It's quite astonishing actually," he continued as if talking to himself. His mother?

"How-" A thousand questions swirled in his head, hundreds to sound, hundreds to keep. "Why did you feel the need to tell me that?"

It was Snape's turn to blink. "I assumed you've never met anyone who knew them. I simply-"

"Actually, I changed my mind. I really don't care. Don't care what you thought, and I don't care that you knew my parents," he shot, his voice raising.

"This is a bit uncalled for," Snape said, a new line in his forehead.

"You started the conversation!" Harry said, his temper surfacing.

"I had your interests in mind," Snape said, so calmly that Harry wanted to hit him.

"You have no idea what kind of person I am, how could you possibly know anything about my 'interests'?

Snape crossed his arms. "I believe I've learned a lot, considering this reaction."

Harry's brow furrowed. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Snape's nostrils flared. "Mind your tongue. I'll remind you that you are speaking to a professor."

The reaction made something in him jump with excitement, like a hungry cat for food. "Well, Professor, some words of advise. Fuck off." He grabbed his rucksack from the floor where it had fallen and left the classroom, Snape silent behind him.

Harry stood outside the door a moment, breathing hard, the buzzing in his head louder than it had been in a very long time. The noise spread and clustered out into his ears and faded, his skin still reverberating. It gave way to one, pure, unadulterated sound that rose above the chaos.

_Monster.

* * *

_

"We're doing it," Harry announced.

"Knew it," Blaise said, flipping through a tabloid. Theo opened his mouth to say something and looked down at the carpet instead.

"This is going to be delicious," Draco said, eyes gleaming.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Weasley. Harry rolled his eyes.

"Don't speak to me," Harry warned.

"No, but really, I'm curious, who the fuck do you think you are?" He walked over to where Harry was seated in front of the fire and towered over him. "Messing with a man's life, his career?"

"You can act big as you want, Weasel, it's not going to get you anywhere. It doesn't matter what you think," Harry said slowly and loudly. "When are you going to get that?"

"When you get that you can't just go about ruining people's lives and getting away with it!"

"Oh, like how I ruin your life? Oh, poor poor Weasel getting bullied by the rich kids?" Harry said, a disgusted look on his face. "God, get over yourself! Acting morally superior isn't going to make you a better person. Because we're going to do whatever the fuck we want, and you won't do anything about it."

"Fuck you," Weasley said, looking slightly disturbed.

"Just because you're poor doesn't make you any better than the rest of us, right boys?" There was a hum of agreement around the room. Harry got up from his seat and stood on the couch, towering over Weasley. He pulled Weasley's face into his hands, looked him straight in the eye, touched the skin around his nose with his thumbs, breathed in his face. "I really want you to get that."

The entire room was silent. "Don't touch me," Weasley said, bewildered, but still as an animal caught in the light.

Harry smiled and let go.

* * *

_You look remarkably like your father. But you have your mother's eyes. It's quite astonishing actually..._

With his finger on the cold surface of the mirror he traced the curve of his nose, dug into the crease at the corner of his lip, dragged along the straight line of his jaw. He took it all in together and tried to separate them into two people, tried to envision them there, looking back at him in the mirror.

Someone put a hand on his shoulder.

He jumped, gasped. "Theo! How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?"

"Sorry," he said, laughing a little. "What are you doing?"

Harry shook his head. He was hungry in a way where even his lungs felt like they needed filling, feeding.

"Nothing," he insisted.


	2. No Longer Mourn for Me When I am Dead

**Chapter Two: Machine**

_No longer mourn for me when I am dead_

_Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell_

_Give warning to the world that I am fled_

_From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:_

_Nay, if you read this line, remember not_

_The hand that writ it; for I love you so_

_That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot_

_If thinking on me then should make you woe._

_O, if, I say, you look upon this verse_

_When I perhaps compounded am with clay,_

_Do not so much as my poor name rehearse._

_But let your love even with my life decay,_

_Lest the wise world should look into your moan_

_And mock you with me after I am gone._

_Sonnet LXXI, William Shakespeare_

* * *

"Potter, I suggest you stop trying to provoke me."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, Professor."

"Cease that infernal racket," Snape said, glaring at Harry's biro, which had just been clanging against the metal leg of his chair.

This wasn't going as Harry intended. He didn't intend to be enraged at the very sight of Snape or make him suffer for the dreams, the questions, the desperation that has haunted him since Snape made that seemingly small revelation. But he couldn't help it. Gone was the desire he'd once felt, only to be replaced by blood curdling fury.

And so he tapped, tapped, tapped that pen.

Snape sighed. "What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish?"

"Nothing. It's a habit."

"It's infuriating, not to mention distracting."

"It's a habit, I can't help it."

"Have you no concept of classroom decorum?"

"Do you have any concept of not being a complete git?"

Harry's voice reverberated in the silence of the room, and he forgot about the twenty other people there. Snape's face tensed even more than Harry thought possible, eyes glittered, his hand clasping the desk behind him like he was holding back, and Harry was scared for half a second.

Slowly, "Get out of my classroom."

Harry shook his head. "You can't chuck me out, I pay to go to this school, _my_ money makes up your salary-"

"Shut up!" Snape roared. Then, he was quiet and slow again. "And get out." Harry's blood boiled, but the fierceness of that whisper promised defeat in the end, so he shoved his books off his desk just to give Snape a lasting pain in his arse, grabbed his rucksack, and moved toward the door.

"Potter." Harry considered ignoring him, but he was curious.

"What?" he shot back rudely, turning around.

"Detention. Friday, seven o'clock."

When Harry slammed the door shut behind him, the muted sound of Snape's voice ("Close your mouth before you catch flies, Nott") deepened his rage, made him want to scream. He slid down the wall to the floor and breathed deeply between his knees.

* * *

"What the fuck was that?" Theo was the only one who dared to ask.

"Would you kindly fuck off?" Harry didn't see the small flinch in the boy's face. He sat beside Harry on his four poster anyway.

"Is something wrong? Did Snape do something to you?"

"You're wasting your time, Theo," Harry said, staring blankly at nothing. "I'm not going to open up to you," Harry said with disgust. "There's nothing to open up about. Snape's just a git and I don't like him."

Before Theo could answer, Draco, Blaise, and Gregory walked into the room and gathered around Harry's bed.

"I don't know if that was apart of your plan, Potter, but this better fucking work," Gregory started, "I'm failing every one of those quizzes." Snape had begun giving short quizzes on the reading at the start of every class.

"I just did that to get detention with him, you idiot," Harry lied easily. "That way we'll be alone."

"Nice," Blaise complimented, cracking open a window and pulling a cigarette from his snuffbox.

"What are you going to do once you've got him alone?" Draco asked.

_I have no idea._ "He'll see," Harry said, repressing a shudder. He hadn't felt so much, so intensely, in a long, long time. _Revolting.

* * *

_

That evening, the football team from Hogwarts's neighbouring rival school, Durmstrang, was due to arrive for the first match of the year taking place the next day. The party afterward was always a highlight of the season, and Harry bitterly suspected it was no accident that his detention was scheduled at the exact time the celebrations would start.

The students from both schools knew each other well and the competition was mostly friendly, so that night in the rooms,t he atmosphere was lazy, the Durmstrang boys setting up their sleeping bags on the floor, calling it an early night to save energy for the game.

Unfortunately for Harry, they were all straight save for one; Viktor Krum. He was above Harry a year and they'd known each other since he'd started at Hogwarts. Whenever he came, he tried getting off with Harry before trying with anyone else. And so, he was hardly surprised when the tall, dark-headed boy approached his bed.

"Hello," he said pleasantly, looking down at Harry with a smile on his face.

"What do you want, Krum?" Harry said, looking around to make sure everyone was distracted. Being gay to get a teacher sacked was one thing. Being gay because you're gay, though... Most of the boys in his year knew what he was and it was acceptable as long as he didn't flaunt it.

"What every boy wants," he replied and smirked.

Harry very much wanted to reject him, but with what had happened in the last few days and with so little options left at Hogwarts, Krum might be what he needed. "I'll think about it," he said, looking away.

Viktor sat on the bed and bent to do up the laces of his trainers. "Let me convince you," he said quietly. "I'm going to the kitchens," he spoke a little louder now. "Wanna come?" he winked. Harry rose silently, catching Theo's staring eyes as he left the room.

* * *

"Astronomy tower?"

"No, the professors are always checking there."

Harry thought about leading Viktor into a broom cupboard, but shuddered at the idea and picked an empty classroom instead. When Viktor moved to turn the light on, Harry stopped him. "Someone might see," he explained. _And I don't want to see you._

Krum held his head and kissed him slowly and softly the moment they closed the door.

"Really, Krum?" Harry said when they broke apart.

"What?" he said, confused.

"I'm getting a bit tired of you," Harry pouted very slightly. "So you're going to have to make this interesting."

Krum snorted. He grabbed Harry by the hair abruptly, pushing him clumsily backward into a desk, kissing him faster. Harry moaned appreciatively, muttering "that's right," when they broke. Otherwise he was silent, fingers twisting into his partner's belt loops, pulling him closer, rubbing against him in all the right places. Krum kept making noises and Harry just wished he'd shut up.

He felt a hand on the top of his head, pushing him down. If Krum had been an older man he'd been fortunate enough to snatch up, he would have went down on his knees gladly. But Krum was not an older man. He reached up and pulled the hand away. "I'll suck your cock when and if I want to."

"Please?" Krum whined, pulling them closer again.

"Shut up."

Afterwards, they both laid silent on a bed of sorts that they'd made by pushing desks together. Harry didn't want to move, wished he could sleep there.

"You don't make noise," Krum said suddenly, his voice sounding strange. "Whenever we've done this, you've always been really, really quiet."

"A lot of people don't make noise," Harry said softly.

"Fair enough," Krum said, drumming the table with his fingers.

* * *

Durmstrang won the game the next day, but most of the boys didn't care too much and still looked forward to the party afterwards. Harry liked to drink on nights like these because they reminded him of the time he found his father's name in the Trophy Room. So it was with deep annoyance that he made his way to Snape's classroom, a fear in his heart of what the man would do tonight to his comfortable numb.

When Harry reached the door, he stopped and realised he hadn't even come up with a plan of action. Snape's voice seeped through the wood. "Are you going to stand there all night, Potter?" Too late.

"You're late." Snape's tone was clipped, different from during lectures. He was annoyed. "You'll stay the extra fifteen minutes."

Harry said nothing, sitting in the desk directly opposite Snape's.

"I believe I should start by...apologising," he said stiffly.

Harry was shocked. "What?"

"I may have...assumed too much when I decided to tell you I went to school with your father."

Harry flinched. "You, you're practically green with disgust at apologising."

"I am not accustomed to pleading guilty."

"Do it more often," Harry said. "People will like you better."

The corner of Snape's mouth pulled upwards by a fraction and Harry felt high for having been the cause of it for a moment. He'd never seen anything even resembling a smile on Snape's face. It looked good on him.

Silence. "However, I cannot forget the fierceness of your reaction." Harry hardened.

"You already admitted you assumed too much. Don't make the same mistake twice."

"Let's leave that judgment to me.

"I'd really rather not." Harry thought about leaving but he felt frozen in place.

"All you have to do," Snape rose and moved to the front of his desk "is tell me why you were so vehemently against speaking of your parents." They both said nothing for minutes on end, but there was so much noise in Harry's head. "I could sit here all-"

"I just don't want to think about them!" he blurted.

"Why not?"

"What?"

"Why do you not want to think about your parents?"

"Because," Harry couldn't think why, "because..." Nobody had ever asked him these questions. People just avoided mentioning his parents full stop. He didn't have answers prepared. He wanted to be angry, he was sure somewhere deep inside he was furious, but as he considered the man's question, all he could feel was the hollowness inside the shield Snape was knocking on. He waited. "Because there's no point. I can't change what happened." It seemed like a healthy answer.

Snape just looked at him. "Why do you not want to think about your parents?"

"I just told you," Harry said stiffly, his temper finally flaring. Even though this is what he'd been dreading, he felt relieved to feel the bubbling inside of him, like when a fish that looks dead twitches with life in the tank.

"You're lying to me."

"No, I'm not!" Harry sputtered, outraged.

"I could hear you thinking about that answer, Potter. I do not want a response you have automated for an adult's consumption because you think it'll satisfy me or convince me to leave you alone. It will not work." Harry glared at the man, saying nothing, wondering if he was reading his mind somehow. "Now, answer the question. Why do you not want to think about your parents?"

Harry searched and searched. " I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

Harry shook his head. "I don't know, I just get angry."

"Angry at what?"

"I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"When do we ever _want_ to talk about these things, Harry?"

This made Harry finally look up a Snape. He leaned against the desk behind him much like he did in class, and to avoid thinking about anything important, Harry admired the masculine beauty of his professor's long legs, the straight, exquisite line they made against their background. It jolted him into remembering why he was even here. If he was going to seduce Snape, they had to at least be on speaking terms. Frustrated, Harry silently cursed the man. _Why does he have to be so bloody difficult?_

"Listen," he started, keeping his voice soft, "I've been through this before. Therapists, social workers...I don't need this. I appreciate it, really, but..."

Snape nodded. "I understand. If all of that had worked for you, I'm sure I would not have been capable of eliciting such a furious response at the mention of your parents. Regardless, I think I can provide a different perspective for you, especially considering I knew both your parents..."

"You knew my mother as well?" Harry said, caught off guard for what seemed like the thousandth time in this man's presence.

"We lived in the same neighbourhood in Surrey. Growing up, we spent all our summers together."

"What-" Harry sliced the question to a stump before he could fully form it in the air. _What was she like?_

"She was the sweetest woman I have ever known."

Harry closed his eyes and put his head down. If this was going to work, if he was going to ruin this bastard's career, he had to play his part. "I'm angry. Angry at them." He couldn't say anymore, because it was true.

"For abandoning you?"

Harry nodded, keeping his head down, eyes still closed. It'd been a long time since he had to fight off so much feeling. It wasn't working. It was clawing up from his stomach, begging to be turned out.

He opened his eyes. "I know- I know, it's not their fault, that they never decided to leave me or anything but I just," he sighed "I can't help it."

"It's an explanation you created as a child, to deal with what happened, to have someone to blame" Snape said. "You don't need to believe it anymore." Harry had never thought it that way before. "Your parents loved nothing in the world better than they loved you."

Before Harry had even realised Snape was approaching him, he was being handed a photograph, his head level with his professor's stomach. "This a picture that Lily sent me shortly after you were born. You can have it." Harry reached for the picture, and with his other hand held on to Snape's. He felt Snape tense as if he were about to pull away, but Harry was too engrossed in the photo to care. It was of his mother, with her baby in her arms. She was beautiful.

"Thank you," Harry said. He pulled Snape's hand toward his mouth and kissed his knuckles. It was an odd thing to do, but Snape only swallowed visibly, no expression on his face, and reclaimed his hand.

"You can go now," he said. "And remember what brought you here, Potter. Don't pull a stunt like that in my classroom ever again. It will not go unpunished."

"Yes, Professor." Polite.

Snape stepped away as Harry left his seat, retreating back to his desk. Harry left, fighting back the turmoil that started and burned in the pocket of his trousers where he'd stowed the first real image of his mother he'd ever come across. Instead, a smile forced its way onto his face as he thought of Snape's bobbing Adam's apple._ A brilliant start._

* * *

Severus Snape sat at his desk, pondering the strange teen that had just left his classroom. He could still feel the boy's lips against his hand, puzzled as to what it was about. Considering Harry's past, which Snape was well aware of from substantial study of his file, he'd think that Potter would be scared of physical touch rather than akin to it...

Even though he felt like he'd made some progress in ingratiating himself with the boy, there was just something about him that seemed off...something completely impenetrable in his eyes, something wild and numb in his countenance, something terrible racketing around in those perfect bones.

For they were perfect bones, even he could not deny it. Harry Potter had taken the best from both his parents (even his deplorable father) in a combination heavenly enough to make people blind to the raging demon beneath that golden skin. But Severus wasn't blind.

His thumb brushed over the knuckles of his other hand, the site of Harry's kiss. _I don't like the way he looks at me, _he thought._ There's something wrong with the way he looks at me._


	3. They That Have Power to Hurt

They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces

And husband nature's riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

_William Shakespeare, Sonnet XCIV_

* * *

"My mum's ringing me like a blinking stalker," Theo yelled over the sound of the music and the crowd in The Three Broomsticks, his face scrunched and frustrated, the light from his mobile phone reflecting off it. This pub was the only fun to be had on a Saturday night in Hogsmead, where the Sixth Form boys were allowed to roam on the weekends as long as they obeyed the curfew. Which they never did.

Harry was waiting at the bar for a cider. He never turned to look at Theo, his eyes fixed outside the pub's window where an older Prefect from Hogwarts was standing, smoking a cigarette and drinking a pint.

"Tell her to bugger off," he said indifferently.

Theo looked up from his phone, scandalised. "No!"

Harry finally made brief eye contact with the Prefect. He gave a small smile and turned away to look at Theo.

"Why not?"

"Er, gee, I dunno, cause she's my mother! She's paying for this larger," Theo gestured at his drink, which had been standing at the bar untouched.

"Which you can't even drink because she keeps ringing, determined to make your life miserable," Harry said, taking the first swig out of Theo's glass.

Theo frowned. "She's only doing it cause she cares."

Harry scoffed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a habit he'd never gotten out of despite his aunt's efforts. "Oh get off it, you know she's always been kind of a bitch," Harry said tonelessly, and went back to staring at the Prefect.

Theo didn't say anything, and Harry felt cold glass against his hand, which tore his gaze away from the window. The bar staff had come with his drink. He paid the girl, ignored the glass she'd given him and drank straight out of the cider bottle. He moved off the bar and started to head to the table where the rest of the boys were sitting, when Theo clasped his wrist and pulled him back.

"Oi," Harry said softly, not wanting to draw too much attention but still yanking his arm away from Theo. Coldness crawled up his spine and hugged it.

If Theo noticed, he didn't let on. "Do you ever like-" Theo exhaled hard. "Do you ever hear yourself? Like the things you say, how unemotional and fucked up you sound all the time?" He grabbed his glass from the bar and took a long drink. His fingers were trembling.

Harry laughed, more out of exasperation than anything else. He turned and walked away from Theo, not bothering to answer, neck of the cider bottle hanging loosely from his cold fingers. He was so tired of people telling him 'can't you feel anything? don't you cry?'. He was so sick of people pointing out his indifference, of telling him he was numb. How could he not know? How could they think he didn't know?

Why couldn't they just let him forget?

There no chairs left at the table where Draco, Blaise, Gregory, and Vincent sat so Harry just plunked down into Draco's lap.

"Get your bony arse off me," Draco sneered.

"My arse is not bony," Harry said, play frowning and running his fingers through his friend's flaxen hair.

"Denial isn't just a river, Harry," Draco said solemnly, obviously a bit drunk.

Harry threw his head back and laughed loudly. "God, that's terrible." A man at the bar turned at the noise and stared. "Yes?" Harry asked, eyebrow raised. The man said nothing but smiled lecherously, revealing some missing teeth.

The whole table laughed hysterically. Theo emerged from the crowd, looking calmer than when Harry had left him and smirked. "I think he likes you," he commented, which earned Harry another round of laughing.

"Don't be disgusting," Harry sneered. "Stop staring, you old pervert!" The man winked and turned back around.

"What is it with you and old men?" Draco laughed. _If only you knew, Malfoy,_ Harry thought. He swatted him across the head playfully.

They got chucked out of the pub before they could finish their drinks on account of the fact that Harry had managed to convinced Theo, who was on his fourth beer, to get on top of the table and perform a strip tease. The staff got to them before he could pull off his trousers. They burst from the doors laughing hysterically, Theo still half-naked and shivering, having forgotten his shirt inside.

Harry took the opportunity to make an impression with the Prefect, who was still sipping his drink with his mate. "Hi," Harry said breathlessly when they made eye contact.

"Hello," he said, smiling. "Are we to thank you for that lovely little display?"

"Are you going to tell on me?" Harry asked, pouting. He had to remind himself not to be too ostentatious with everyone around to watch him.

The Prefect's smile shortened to something more devious and he looked at Harry with renewed interest. "I'm off duty," he said softly.

"Well in that case, yes, I take full responsibility!" Harry smiled. "You should join us," he continued, nodding his head back toward the boys who were still hooting and hollering.

The Prefect and his friend exchanged a look. "Night not over?" his friend asked, throwing his fag to the ground and stepping on it.

"'Course not," Harry laughed.

* * *

The darkness of the forest was overwhelming, swallowing up the feel of his heart beating hard against his chest, the burn of his lungs as he breathed ice cold air in and out of them, running, running, running. The trees, still green and full, whipped his face with their branches, no mercy, no gentleness, only black giants that seemed to know everything and reveal nothing.

"Harry! Wait!"

Theo's voice, much like everything else, drifted, was lost, insignificant and small and gone. He kept running, passed the other boys, passed everything. He was the fastest.

He dropped to the ground, which was wet and cold, when he could hear nothing. Face down in the dirt, his spontaneous fit of energy cooled in the clammy grasp of the forest floor. Time passed, he wasn't sure how much of it, and he could hear someone who had followed and lagged behind him, out of breath, feet moving, dancing, irregularly.

"You're-" Ragged breathing. "You're bloody fast." The Prefect.

"Where are you the others?" Harry was struck by the possibility that someone could press their foot to his back, keep him from breathing, moving.

"They stopped a while back, it was getting too dark." Harry smirked. "Came all this way for you," The Prefect continued, now panting lightly. He was getting closer, Harry could hear his feet shifting in the ground nearer and nearer to him.

"You shouldn't have," Harry mocked and before he was ready for it, he felt a warm kiss being pressed to the nape of his neck. He shivered when he was released.

"Sorry if I'm being forward," the Prefect said, sounding shy. _What a good boy,_ Harry thought. He turned over to find Prefect on his knees next to him. He looked up at him and smiled. "It's alright. I know there aren't a lot of boys around with our...taste, exactly," he said.

"You'd be surprised at how many, actually," the boy replied. Harry pursed his lips._ Not enough._ He put his hand on the Prefect's thigh.

A sniff. "Can we-" his question was broken off when Harry reached for the fastenings of his trousers. Harry looked at him, never stopping his deft, working hand. "Let's try not to make too much noise, yeah?"

Prefect gasped when he was exposed to the cold night air and rushed to respond. "Ye-yeah."

* * *

"Where in the bloody hell were you?" Theo whisper-yelled. The cold air and the forest seemed to have sobered him.

"We got lost."

"Yeah, okay," Theo said doubtfully. Harry was caught off guard but shook it off quick enough to shoot him a glare, a silent dare to say anything else. Theo shut up and walked ahead of him and the group. No one else seemed to notice, everyone still talking and laughing amongst themselves. Blaise, smoking a fag as usual, took twigs and leaves out of Harry's hair every once in a while as they made slow progress toward the school.

They climbed the stairs to the entrance lazily and some of the drunker boys even stumbled. Draco was almost at the top. He was almost panting, "They need to build a lift or some-"

When he stopped talking like someone had closed a hand over his mouth, Harry looked up. Draco had stopped at the top of the stairs and stood staring. Harry climbed faster and slowly, surely, what came into view was the dark outline of a figure standing just outside the shadows.

Snape made a show of checking his watch. "Good morning," he said briskly. Harry felt a rush of something. Discomfort, embarrassment...regret?

Snape's eyes snapped from face to face, seeming to skip Harry's. They doubled over Prefect's. "Diggory," he began, his voice tense, "Not setting a very good example, are you? I would have expected more from a Prefect." The boy looked dismayed, and opened his mouth to speak but didn't say anything.

"Professor," Harry started, "we don't have a curfew."

"I was not addressing you, Mr. Potter," Snape said sharply but calmly. Harry felt a mixture of anger and something else and had to make an effort to keep his mouth shut. "Diggory," Snape continued. "Why are you and these boys out after curfew?" Snape sniffed, a disgusted look on his intriguing face. "And why do some of you smell as if you're sweating ale?" Snape eyes shifted between his and Harry's for a second, as if trying to solve a puzzle. "And lastly, why do yourself and Mr. Potter look as if you've slept in dirt?"

The boys stood stock still, not daring to move. There was something about Snape's presence, the way he spoke, the way he moved that was off putting and vaguely terrifying. This was strange considering that whatever Snape did, everyone would probably get out of it in the end. Nothing could touch them. And yet they were all quiet, waiting. Harry was slightly aroused. One night with this man was worth a hundred with the boy he'd just had.

"Professor," Diggory finally said, "It's like Harry said, we don't really have a curfew."

"Strange, because I was told you do."

"Well, yeah," Diggory stammered. "But no one really enforces it."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Snape said like he knew he wasn't wrong, "but is it not your job, Mr. Diggory, as a Prefect to," Snape waved a hand in the air mockingly, as if he were looking for words, "enforce rules?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"Quiet," Snape said quickly. His eyes were lit by the light of the moon that was spilling across the entrance stairs. Harry could see he was tired, but his voice remained strong and dismissive with its constant ability to make anyone feel like an idiot. "Don't waste my time with petty excuses. Follow me," he said. He turned and took quick, graceful, efficient steps forward, seeming to pull the boys along behind him.

The boys all exchanged looks beyond Snape's back, Gregory looking much more furious than the rest, and Theo particularly ill. He led them down the stairs into the dungeon where the biology classrooms were, and through weaving halls until they reached a door situated in the middle of a long corridor. His office.

There was only one seat in front of Snape's desk so everyone stood awkwardly and the professor stood straight backed in front of them, his stance not relaxing for a moment.

He crossed his arms. "I'm quickly discovering that almost every boy in this place has little regard for the values that a school should uphold. Respect, decorum, scholarship." This was met with silence. "I see little point in punishing you for tonight's transgression but I can assure you that if it continues I will not stay silent, as many of your professors seem to be doing," Snape pursed his lips. "I attended to this school-"

"Excuse me, sir," Harry interrupted, properly offended. "You just started teaching at this school, how could you possibly think you'd be in the position to-"

"Mr. Potter!" Snape said, louder than he'd said anything during the entire incident. "Do not interrupt me," he said slowly, dangerously. Harry stared at him, starting to breath hard and trying not to show it. "Secondly, I will remind you that I have an obligation to ensure students under my care are abiding by the rules, and that you, as a student, have no right to speak to me that way."

"I'm not going to shut up just because I'm a student. You can't-"

"Get out," he snapped. "Everyone, except you, Potter."

The boys quickly shuffled out of the room, leaving Harry like fodder for the silent fury of the professor. It sometimes amazed Harry how easy it was make such a distant, seemingly indifferent man lose his temper so fast. As he was walking out, Gregory gave Harry a look of warning. Harry suddenly remember what he'd completely forgotten. The mission.

"You wretched boy," Snape snarled once the door shut behind the last relieved boy. His words freshly cut some old hurt out of Harry. "What on Earth gave you the impression that you could talk to me in such a manner? In front of your peers, no less?"

Mission, mission, mission. "You're not exactly going to ingratiate yourself with your students by reprimanding them every half second," Harry said, his voice raising without him willing it to. So much for that.

"My goal isn't to 'ingratiate myself'" Snape mocked him. "My goal is to teach. And part of the lesson is certain actions have certain consequences."

"Nobody likes you," Harry said pointedly, feeling childish even as he said it. He felt dizzy with so much loss of control. How could this be happening to him? He'd never spoken to a teacher like this before. It was all part of blending in, ducking low of the attention of authority. Snape was slowly making him throw it all out the window, and it was frightening.

Snape laughed, a cruel sound that ended as quickly as it had started. "No one has ever 'liked' me, Potter. On the contrary, I think it a brilliant attribute."

Harry's brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Because it means I don't care. It is not my concern what people think of me."

"Don't you care if people hate you? Don't you care if everyone goes 'round your back and talks about what a git you are?"

"It is not my goal in life to be liked, Mr. Potter. If it was, I'd be a very sad man."

"You are a sad man," Harry shot back, but really he just didn't want to admit that he...admired Snape more than anything else.

"All you're doing is buying yourself detention. I couldn't care less what you think I am."

"Then why do you get so angry at me?"

Snape glared at Harry, and his arms had been crossed for so long now that Harry thought he might get them knotted that way for good. "Because you're an irritating little fiend crying for attention, painfully easy to read, and painfully pathetic."

This struck Harry like a blow to the head. Ron Weasley had said similar things to him before, but for some reason they seemed more heavy and significant coming from a man like Snape. Harry refused to look at him. Pregnant silence passed between them.

"Catch a more unique adolescent emotional plague, and perhaps I'd like you a bit more. At least then you'd be interesting."

"Fuck you," Harry said softer than he'd meant. He stared at the stone hard knuckles in Snape's hand, and wished he could be something as immovable and as cold. Before he met Snape, he thought he was. "Stop pretending to know who I am," he forced out.

"I can be gentle and I can be cruel. You chose the latter."

Harry forced himself to look at his professor. "Well just so you know, teachers aren't supposed to say stuff like that to their students. You're supposed to motivate and inspire me."

The corner of Snape's mouth twitched. "I can assure you that I'll be doing neither. You can handle it. Now, get out. Detention on Friday."

* * *

Snape cursed softly when the obviously dejected boy left the room. It was slightly painful to watch him deflate under his words, but his pride got in the way of handing the boy an immediate apology. He hadn't thought he had power to hurt Potter, but it was obvious from the boy's face that he'd been effected.

The man smirked, a part of him still believing that Potter deserved it. He was almost as arrogant as his father...except there was something much more complicated beneath it. James's arrogance had been a much shallower kind.

The next morning, he made his way to the headmaster's office, bracing himself for the man's occasionally grating eccentric personality.

"Severus! What a pleasant surprise. I was just thinking of you! Please, have a seat."

Severus sat stiffly in the chair in front of Albus Dumbledore's grand desk. "Really?" he said, unamused.

"Indeed. What can I do for you, dear boy?"

Severus controlled his urge to cringe at the way Dumbledore always addressed him and intertwined his fingers.

"I caught Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Gregory Goyle, Cedric Diggory, Blaise Zabini and Vincent Crabbe coming out of the Forbidden Forest smelling strongly of alcohol passed curfew last night."

Dumbledore's smiled disappeared. "Oh!"

"They seemed to be under the impression," Severus continued, "that the curfew at Hogwarts is arbitrary."

"Well," Dumbledore shrugged one shoulder, "if they decide not to obey it, I suppose it is." There was a silent pause. "Is that all?" Dumbledore asked, the serene look on his face never faltering.

"I let them off with a warning. But Albus, they seemed surprised to even be reprimanded. What is the meaning of that? When I was here, the curfew was strictly enforced."

"Times have changed, Severus," Dumbledore said. "We're living in a fast paced world, the tradition of rules and retribution is quickly falling out of significance, it seems."

"Not if one made an effort to enforce the rules," Severus replied, making sure to ride the border between polite interjection and rudeness with great care.

Dumbledore just smiled. "It is energy wasted, my boy."

Severus shook his head. "I see them for what they are, Dumbledore, they could be great but they're spoiled, lazy" he said adamantly, "full of potential but depending too much on their wealth to get them through. I know, I went to school with boys like them." Severus wouldn't have been able to attend an expensive school like Hogwarts if it hadn't been for a scholarship.

"I'm very glad I hired you, Severus," Dumbledore said, his infamous twinkle highly visible now. "I think you'll do the boys some good. Just remember; they are only teenagers. They will grow out of this one day."

_I'm not so sure,_ Severus thought, lamenting Dumbledore's complacency.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Severus opened his mouth to refuse, but quickly remembered his argument from the night before with Potter.

"Yes, Albus, I seem to be having trouble with the Potter boy. He's easily irritable and very disrespectful. I've given him more detention than anyone in the class combined."

"Oh, dear," Dumbledore frowned, "Harry's usually very polite with the teachers. How strange!"

"That's...surprising, considering his past."

"Oh, yes, but it never seemed to interfere with his studies," Dumbledore said. "The teachers say he seems a bit distant sometimes, but quite a nice boy. To them, at least," Dumbledore smiled.

"What do you mean?" Severus said, intensely curious. That boy puzzled him more than he'd let on.

"Nothing important," Dumbledore assured him. "Enjoy this lovely Sunday afternoon, Severus," he said, gesturing to the sunny picture outside the window. Severus recognised the dismissal and rose to leave.

* * *

Sooner than he expected, the professor discovered what the headmaster had meant.

The scene before him was like something out of his own dismal adolescence. There was a first year sitting in a windowsill just outside the courtyard, and surrounding him were the same gang he'd reprimanded the night before, smacking the boy over the head, calling him names, and generally terrorizing him. Nearest the wall stood Harry, not doing anything directly to the boy, but watching with glee, laughing at the proceedings.

Severus strode over to the scene quickly, gaining satisfaction from the fact that the boys partially dispersed from around their victim at the mere sound of his voice.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing, professor, just having a bit of fun," Zabini drawled.

"Boy," he said addressing the terrified first year, not knowing his name, "Go to your rooms." The boy fled gratefully. Severus continued, "This behaviour is not only unacceptable, but appalling. All of you will serve detention for this, and are disqualified from receiving full marks on your next exam in my class."

They all looked outraged, but Severus swept passed them before they could complain, sparing Potter one glance before he left the scene. The sight of those viridian eyes that watched him too intently for his liking, sent chills up his arm. _You terrible, terrible thing,_ Severus thought. No one should be able to do that. Mere beauty shouldn't be capable.

* * *

"It's really not fair that you gave me detention for what happened on Sunday," Harry said to Snape on Friday, as he was serving detention. He was scrubbing strange substances off lab equipment and it reminded him too much of his childhood for comfort.

"You were apart of it just as much as the others," Snape said, not looking up from his work.

"No I wasn't!" Harry looked up from the beaker he was washing. "I never even touched him."

"The look of sheer glee on your face told me enough, Potter." Guilt coiled tightly in Harry's chest. "I know your type. Don't like getting your hands dirty, do you?" Harry's work ceased and he stared blankly into the sink. "That poor boy," Snape continued softly. "I had to talk him out of leaving Hogwarts."

Harry's head snapped up. He didn't know if he felt worse for making the boy want to leave the school or surprised that Snape comforted him.

"What? You comforted a student? Blasphemy," Harry said. But part of him was...jealous. _Jealous of a first year,_ he sneered in his head,_ ridiculous._

"I did not appreciate having to fix your damage," Snape said.

"No one asked you too."

"Yes, however, I am-"

"Obligated, yeah, blah, blah, blah."

"Shut up and scrub, Potter."

Harry glared, but something about it made him smile, which he hid by ducking his head and scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.


	4. Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame

_The expense of spirit in a waste of shame_

_Is lust in action; and till action, lust_

_Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,_

_Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,_

_Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,_

_Past reason hunted, and no sooner had_

_Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait_

_On purpose laid to make the taker mad;_

_Mad in pursuit and in possession so;_

_Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;_

_A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;_

_Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream._

_All this the world well knows; yet none knows well_

_To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell._

_William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXIX_

* * *

One, hot, kiss.

He stole it, barley giving the man space to run.

He felt large hands, delicious hands, tell-tale, burning, beautiful hands, at his chest, starting over the two cloth covered dusky buds that scorched to be touched. Harry thought he'd be pushed away, but instead those hands came up, upwards icing and stoking the heat that roared in his neck, in his pulse, in his blood.

They reached his face, gentle and smooth, and then slowly the pressure around Harry's cheek bones started, slowly the fingers went from wanting to cruel. Then, at once, he was wrenched away from his stolen prize and met with the angry black gaze of his biology professor. _My fucking biology professor,_ Harry thought, staring into the man's face and thinking of how surreal it was to begin to know him in this way. _A new high for me_. The mission, the mission.

"Against my better judgement," Snape started, frighteningly low and calm, "I will allow you to explain yourself, even though I would like nothing better than to throw you out of this classroom and never allow you across that threshold again."

Harry was almost panting, his eyes skidding to all parts of Snape's face. "You're hot?"

"Try again," Snape said immediately, his hands seemingly glued to Harry's face, probably so he could push the boy back if he decided to attack again.

"Can you let go of my face?"

"Not until you provide a satisfactory answer."

"This isn't a fucking exam, there's no right answer!"

"I do not care."

"No, seriously, you're hot. I'm attracted to you. That's all I know."

"Liar," Snape said, squinting suspiciously.

"Put your hand over my trousers if you don't believe me," Harry responded softly, smiling. At that, Snape pushed Harry away forcibly.

"Disgusting! Leave."

"No."

"GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!" he roared. He was breathing hard, eyes furious and concentrated on Harry's face. He'd never seen the man this angry.

"Why are you so mad?" Harry said, truly bewildered. "All I did was tell you I was attracted to you!"

"It is the ultimate insult," Snape hissed, "to know that some part of you, however small, thought that your advances would be welcome, that I," Snape emphasised, pointing a finger to his chest, "who has done nothing for you and the other boys in this godforsaken school but try to teach you some sense of decorum, give you some idea of the inescapable consequences for your actions that you will have to face in the real world when you leave this place and you," Snape sputtered for a moment, and Harry watched him have to search for words for the first time, "you throw my efforts back in the face with _this_," he spat, gesturing to Harry's entire body, eyes glittering.

"Nobody asked you to teach us anything but biology!" Harry yelled, infuriated. He was getting so sick of Snape's strange compulsion to "fix" them.

"I am obligated!" Snape yelled back.

"I know, I know," Harry said, closing his eyes, frustrated. "Listen, just..." he breathed in deep. "I'm sorry, okay? I just really see nothing wrong with approaching someone that I find attractive."

Snape looked away from him, crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. "That was not an approach, it was an attack," he said scornfully.

"God, I didn't know you'd be so ridiculously sensitive about it, okay?"

The man snapped in a second, his arms unfolding, and facing Harry again. "I was not being 'sensitive'," he said, spitting out the last word like it was bile in his mouth. "Pray, tell me Potter, how else was I supposed to react? What on earth did you expect, that I would be grateful?"

Harry was so angry he could scream. He burst out before he even had time to think about what he was saying. "Oh for fuck's sake! I'm trying to tell you I want to have sex with you and you can be nothing but foul and overreact like a stupid git!"

"I could wring your neck, right now," he said quietly, looking away from him again. "You are crossing so many lines," he continued and Harry started to talk over him just to shut him up.

"I don't care about lines, about rules," Harry said. "They're stupid, not to mention outdated. People should be able to pursue relationships, physical or otherwise, with whoever they want. Trying to control that is just...stupid."

Harry stopped, expecting some sarcastic jab about his eloquence. Instead: "Find someone your own age."

Harry laughed. "I have. Loads of times. Now, I want you."

Snape ignored the last comment. "What about Nott? What's wrong with him? The poor boy adores you," he said softly. _And that's exactly the problem,_ Harry thought. "But I suppose that is the problem, yes?" he finished and turned to look at Harry.

Harry refrained from showing any reaction, seething inside. He wanted to kiss Snape again, smack him. "Shut up," he blurted. So much for showing no reaction. "I hate it when you do that," _read my mind_, "when you pretend to know what I'm thinking and feeling and when you overanalyse things that just," he shook his head, "absolutely don't need to be analysed."

Snape shook his head slowly, smirk slithering to his lips. "So clever, aren't you?"

Snape's words chilled him from within. He practically ran from the room, the man's glittering, smiling, black eyes suddenly unbearable. As he walked off in the direction to his room, he heard a dark chuckle fill the space he was desperately putting between them.

* * *

He moved, he moved.

He twisted and turned every which way during class (in one of those little desk chairs they stick the students to) in a manner that managed to annoy and arouse Severus at the same time.

"Stop fidgeting," he finally barked at the boy one day, trying not to look him directly in the face for fear of remembering he knew what it was to be half a centimeter away from it; knew what it was to be pressed against it, too.

Severus expected the first come back from the boy like a reflex. "I can fidget all I want."

He was forced to look directly at Potter. He glared with all his might, the tension of threat sizzling. He said nothing, just stared, which probably caught the brat off guard. The boy kept stum, catching _Severus_ off guard, and leaned back in his chair, making a physical effort to stop moving so much. But Severus still spotted one of the boy's foot behind his other, bobbing, shaking, ankle twisting, hanging loosely this way and that. A thought stuck him clear and blue, and rang through him until the end of classes that day.

Severus wanted that ankle.

He wanted it twisting, hanging loosely this way and that, in his hand. It reminded him of that mouth; he wanted again the clear taste of hot watery nothing, the empty, formless, slippery haven of that mouth. It reminded him of everything so beautiful so close. One, hot, kiss.

That was when he knew something had been unleashed. _Damn you, Potter._

* * *

Gregory sat next to Harry in the common room that night, speaking in hushed tones, or as hushed as Gregory could be. Harry was watching the light from the fire flit on and off of Weasley's red hair.

"You and the professor don't seem very lovey dovey," he said, not seeming particularly angry about it.

"Don't question my methods, Goyle," Harry answered, lip quirking.

There was pause. "Listen," Gregory started, "Snape's kind of an arsehole, but all in all...I think he's a good guy. Maybe we shouldn't-"

"Oh no," Harry said. "We're doing it." Snape had rejected him at least a week ago, and still it stung. He'd never been pushed away like that. He was going to get what he wanted.

Gregory frowned and Harry thought he might fight it again but instead he just nodded, and turned away.

Theo tugged at his hand by his side and Harry had to stop himself from jolting. He'd forgotten Theo was there.

"You tried to kiss him, didn't you?"

Harry almost snapped his neck to stare at Theo. "No!"

Theo gave him a wane smile. "Don't try to deny it, I...heard some of your conversation the other night."

Harry was furious. His first instinct was to tell Theo so, but he tamped it down, not wanting to make a scene in the common room. "You were eavesdropping?" he said disdainfully.

Theo blushed and looked away. "I was curious, I wanted to know..." his voice fell off.

"The man has higher morals than I expected," Harry admitted.

"I figured he would be difficult..."

"Really? Why?" Harry asked, genuinely curious. In his experience, any man could be bought with sex. No matter how old.

"He just doesn't seem like the type...should've warned you, probably," Theo shrugged, smiling lightly. Harry felt something like affection tickle at him. The poor boy adores you...

Harry, not really thinking about what he was doing, leaned over to peck the boy on the cheek. "You're really sweet sometimes, you know?" he whispered in his ear. When he pulled away, he noticed a couple of people staring and looking away fearfully when they met his eyes. It made him feel like a sort of beast.

Theo wasn't smiling anymore. He looked reverent, adoring. Grateful.

Harry's brow furrowed, and he immediately regretted doing anything. He wished he could take it back.

"Don't look at me like that," Harry said and got up to leave, knowing he wouldn't be able to bear that look on Theo's face for another second.

* * *

The next morning at breakfast, when the post arrived, Harry received a letter. He groaned and wailed inwardly, knowing it couldn't be anyone or anything besides a social worker or a barrister or court. The others thought it strange as well because Harry rarely received letters, but they didn't ask questions, didn't even look at the thing, as though it were evil and possessed.

When Harry opened it later in private, he found that he'd be expected to speak to the new social worker again, Hermione, about his 'progress'. He sighed. The coming Friday night. The exact time he usually had detention with Snape.

"Fuck."

* * *

"I can't make detention this week."

Harry's placed his arse right on Snape's desk after the last student left the classroom.

Snape tensed. "Remove your posterior from my workspace."

"So, we're just going to have to reschedule or something," Harry continued, ignoring the man, putting his hand behind him and leaning back slightly.

Snape dragged his chair back and moved away from the desk swiftly. "And what, pray tell, is your no doubt sorry excuse for asking to miss a detention."

"First of all, I'm not asking, I'm telling you," Harry smiled a bit to let Snape know he was half-joking, "secondly, it's not a sorry excuse, it's actually quite legitimate." He pulled the folded square of the letter out of his pocket, and offered it to Snape. He'd decided if he wanted Snape, he had to get to work; to stop getting angry, to stop pushing him away...to make him feel sorry for him.

Snape's arms were crossed for a good half a minute before he started to approach Harry cautiously.

"I'm not going to try to kiss you," Harry placated, exasperated.

"Keep your voice down!" Snape hissed, and snatched the letter out of Harry's fingers without touching him. Harry frowned and waited, rather nervously, for Snape to finish reading.

"I feel sorry for this...Hermione Granger," Snape said after a minute, handing the letter back.

"Don't. She chose her profession." Snape was not sympathetic enough for Harry's liking.

"That does not mean you have to give the girl hell."

"I'm not going to give her hell! What do you know about how I'll treat her?"

Snape pursed his lips. "You are an intolerably rude nightmare with your professor, I cannot begin to imagine the things you must say to your social workers."

"Well if they didn't feel the need to watch me and check up on me every fifteen seconds, I wouldn't have to put them in their place," Harry said matter-of-factly.

"It's not as if they do it to you and to you only. These checks are quite routine."

Harry frowned. He'd never thought of that before. "How would you know?" he asked suspiciously.

Snape snorted. "Please, Potter. Hogwarts isn't the only school I have taught in. And it certainly isn't the only school with orphaned youth."

Snape seemed so dismissive and confident, Harry almost forgot about it. But something made him think... "I don't believe you."

"I honestly could not care less. Stop asking inane questions."

"Oh okay so," Harry started, leaning forward and sliding off the desk slowly, making sure his trousers tightened around his legs and other enticing places as well, "you're allowed to interrogate me about anything it is you'd like to know, but I'm not to know anything about you? How is that fair?"

"This is not a relationship of equals, Potter. I am the professor and you are the student," Snape said as though Harry were slow.

Harry approached him slowly and Snape tensed as though not knowing whether to move back or stand his ground. He chose to step back. "Really? Than why is it, _professor,_ that you seem to be...scared of me?"

"I am weary of being sexually molested, I think anyone would be if they had reason to beli-"

"Oh come on," Harry smirked. "I'm harmless," he finished innocently.

Snape gave him a look that said he seriously doubted that. "Leave."

"I don't think inspirational teachers are supposed to tell their students to get out of their sight as much as you-"

"Just. Leave." Harry stepped closer, closer, until Snape wouldn't move back any longer, seeming to decide he had to stand his ground.

"No," Harry said firmly. He reached his face to Snape, breathed over it, smiled, giggled.

"Impertinent little-" He stopped and took a deep breath. He gave away nothing in his face, his eyes, his mouth, which Harry was so dangerously, so deliciously close to...but still, Harry knew. Knew that all he had to do was push. "Get away from me."

"I know what you want to do," Harry said. "I know you want to push me over that desk and," Harry half closed his lips around Snape's bottom one, pulling it down and open, breathing into his mouth, "do all sorts of things to me." Harry kept kissing, small, reverent kisses into and around Snape's mouth. The only sign of life Snape gave him were his short, soft heaving exhalations.

Suddenly, there was a stinging pain at his scalp.

"Oi!"

"I told you more than once!"

"Let go of me!"

"You asked for this. Remember this," Snape growled, dragging Harry to the door by the hair, "the next time you decide to inflict your inappropriate attentions on some other sorry subject!"

Harry was thrown out the room, his head hurting, his arse on the floor, and his cock hard.


	5. My Love Swears She is Made of Truth

**NOTE: **Sorry if there are any mistakes in this, I was pressed for time! And thanks to the people who've been reading and reviewing, I really appreciate it :) Enjoy.

* * *

_When my love swears that she is made of truth,_

_I do believe her, though I know she lies, _

_That she might think me some untutor'd youth, _

_Unskilful in the world's false forgeries. _

_Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, _

_Although I know my years be past the best, _

_I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue, _

_Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest. _

_But wherefore says my love that she is young? _

_And wherefore say not I that I am old? _

_O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue, _

_And age, in love, loves not to have years told. _

_Therefore I'll lie with love, and love with me, _

_Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be._

_William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXXVIII_

* * *

Slow. "Do not, for a moment, think that I am not fully aware of what you're doing."

Harry looked around the room. "Okay."

Snape stared at him curiously. "Right," he affirmed.

Harry looked around the room again. "What, exactly, are you talking about, may I ask?"

"No, you may not. Just know that you are not dealing with an idiot. I am not Professor Slughorn."

Harry was careful to keep his face blank, but inside he was seething. Slughorn was the professor they had sacked last year.

"You sound like such a crazy person sometimes. I've no idea what you're on about."

* * *

_It's not as if they do it to you and to you only. These checks are quite routine._

Remembering what Snape said, Harry felt slightly sorry for Hermione, as she twitched in her chair.

"Hello, Harry," she said sweetly but firmly. Braver than she looked.

"Hi."

"Well, you're almost half way through the term," she started and Harry forced himself not to roll his eyes. "And I just wanted to ask you how your classes are going, and if you need anything from me."

"Are these checks really routine for everyone?"

Hermione's eyebrows shot up into her hair. She seemed please and surprised all at once. Harry didn't know whether to be happy or disgusted. Disgusted with her or with himself, he couldn't decide. Was it so easy to please her?

"Yes, I can assure you they are. Actually, you have quite a few classmates that are meeting with me today as well."

Oh. There was a long pause. "Like who?"

Hermione's brow furrowed. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that."

Harry nodded. He wouldn't want her to give his name to anyone else either. Still, he tried. "Like Neville Longbottom?"

Hermione smiled a little. "Sorry, can't say." Another pause, as if she was hesitating. "What makes you mention him?"

"I can tell." Foster homes had taught him something. Hermione nodded, seeming to understand.

"That's very observant of you."

Harry considered not saying anything and let her swim in awkwardness. Instead: "Not much else to do in this place." Smirk.

Hermione looked like someone who was very happy and trying really hard not to show it. Harry almost laughed. It was almost like she wanted to be him..._friend_. Harry cringed inwardly.

"Oh, that's too bad. I was under the impression that there are many extracurricular activities to take part in...like the football team. Do you like sports?"

"Not really. I like football, though," he admitted.

"Maybe that would be something to look into than, if you're bored." It was actually quite a good idea, would give him time away from the gang. He disliked them so. But he'd be damned if he told her that.

"Maybe," he answered and nodded.

When the meeting was over, he had the distinct feeling he'd been nice. Too nice. It tingled and prickled his skin and he felt strangely.

* * *

"She thinks I should join the football team," Harry announced as he entered Snape's classroom for their rescheduled detention that Sunday night.

"Pardon?" The voice was not deep or velvety or smooth.

"Where's Snape?" Harry said, staring at the man in Snape's place behind his desk.

"I'm to oversee your detentions from now on," Mr. Filch, the wizened old man said. "They're too lean on you these days, in my opinion."

Harry was seething. How dare Snape do this? This would be a major obstacle if he was going to really seduce the man. Detentions were the only real time they had alone. "Nobody asked your opinion," Harry sneered.

"Shut up and take your seat, boy," the man, pointing a trembling fingers to Harry's usual seat.

Harry huffed and took his seat, planning his revenge to the constant stream of Filch's annoyed murmuring.

* * *

In a childish fit, Harry stormed out of Snape's classroom the moment detention ended, barley giving Filch time to say two words to him, and searched the dungeons for any door that looked suspiciously like the opening to Snape's quarters.

After banging open many dusty cupboards and storage rooms, Harry finally knocked and failed to open the right door. "Snape!" He knocked again, harder. "Snape! I know you're in there!"

The door snatched open suddenly and Harry had to keep himself from jumping back. "Ha!" he exclaimed, for no good reason.

"It's Professor Snape," the man drawled. "Mind your manners." He stood wearing black as usual, but with his suit jacket off, a state that Harry had never seen him in. His shoulders looked wonderful. But mostly what caught Harry off-guard was how relieved he was to see Snape in front of him, real and dense, as if he'd been afraid that he'd disappeared.

"Yes?" Snape blinked down on him, seeming impatient, and blocking Harry sight of the inside of his rooms with his body.

"Filch? Really?" Harry said, breaking his attention away from Snape's shoulders to his face.

"You obviously are incapable of acting appropriately when we are in detention together, so I thought if you were inflicted upon Mr. Filch, well...his job isn't as valuable."

Harry contorted his face in disgust. "Ugh! You think I would-" he sputtered, "with Filch! That's disgusting!"

"For all I know, you throw yourself at any older man that comes your way." Snape's eyes gleamed with something significant.

Harry's thoughts became frantic. _Does he know, does he know, does he know? How does he know?_ "You. Bastard."

"Yes, I know quite a bit more about you than you might like," Snape continued and Harry was growing more horrified by the minute. "I know what you used to get up to before you came to Hogwarts. I know about Mr. Bloom-"

"Shut up," Harry said, his eyes closed tight.

"And Mr. Crouch." They were names Harry hadn't heard in a long time, his foster parents, one from when he was thirteen and the other from when he was fifteen. He'd fucked them both. And he loved it.

Or at least he thought he had. With the way Snape said it though, the way it came out of his mouth, it made him feel ashamed. And Harry hated feeling ashamed; _hated it_. He'd spent most of his life ashamed. He worked hard, worked _everyday_ trying not to regret anything.

Harry raised a trembling hand to touch his cheek. It was wet.

"I-" his voice was croaky. He tried again. "I- I haven't cried-" he gasped and he was crying more and _fuck_ he forgot how much he hated this, "since I was eleven."

Snape looked speechless, his eyebrows lifted slightly, his stance relaxed. "I apolog-"

Harry lunged at Snape, pushing him through the door and shutting it closed behind him. He went for Snape's neck, scratching at it viciously, his nails becoming his claws. He managed to give the man a few good scrapes, but Snape was quick and pinned his arms down, embraced him, trying to control Harry's wild fit.

His anger rolled and twisted in his stomach, the cold against his wet face and the feel of Snape's body pressed against him churning over into something much more agreeable. Lust.

Complete need.

Harry growled and tried to _climb_ Snape's body until they toppled over onto the settee and he could feel the heat of the fire at his back, the man's own at his front. He latched his mouth onto Snape's, desperate, still clawing at his face, pressing and stretching the skin, running his nails through stubble.

He straddled Snape's lap properly and began to dig his erection into him, searching for an answering one, which took a few minutes of feverish kissing and humping to get. And when he had it, Harry moaned into Snape's mouth and pulled away to get a better angle. Snape held his hands as he leaned back, still rutting and breathing wildly. The professor's dark gaze lit something in Harry's throat and landed in his cock.

"You fucking-oh!" Harry was almost sweating, and he started to feel the burn of his position in his stomach but he couldn't care less. "Bastard, you bastard, you can't say things like that to me," Harry panted, the second half breathy and barley audible as Snape silently pulled him back to him, kissed hi, pressed his hands into Harry's ass and pushing them harder together.

"Fuck!" Harry exclaimed, and slapped Snape half-heartedly in the face. Snape only stared heatedly at him, pushed them closer, pressed them tighter. And when Snape pulled away again to pull Harry's shirt off of him and latch his mouth to Harry's nipple, Harry was overwhelmed, his orgasm hitting home suddenly and uninvited. He let himself bask in the filth of moving in the hot wet in his pants, and the idea of what they'd just done.

But Snape was still hard. Harry immediately reached a hand to the man's belt but before he could even started, Snape's hand came around his wrist. "No," he said.

Harry panted in Snape's ear. "Please? I want to touch it."

"No," Snape whispered, but his grip around Harry's wrist was still like steel. Harry gave up and sagged against him. His breathing calmed and matched the man's under him after a few moments. Then, as his mouth stretched to yawn, he felt it. That cracked, caked feeling of your face when tears have been there, unwashed.

And that was all it took to break him again, and before he knew what was happening, his chest was bubbling, and his mouth, his heart, his eyes, were overflowing with the grim of whatever it was that resided inside him. Snape clasped him tightly, stroking, rocking, shushing.

* * *

When Harry awoke in the morning, his eyes and his throat were still sore. Snape was sitting at the edge of the bed, facing away from him. Harry crawled over to him.

"Morning," he said, laying a hand on the man's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Snape said quietly.

Harry sighed. "Why?" he asked tiredly, but he suspected he already knew why.

"I took advantage of you. I'm no better than your foster parents."

Harry opened and closed his eyes slowly, still confused from sleep. "What-what are you talking about? You're so different from them that," he swallowed, "I can't even believe you and them exist in the same universe."

Snape stared at him. "You need to go back to sleep."

"No, seriously, listen to me," Harry said, taking Snape's hands. "I liked what happened last night. It's what I needed."

Snape shook his head slowly, his hands tense fists in Harry's. "Of course you would say that. This is your pattern. Seduce older men, bed them..."

"No, no," Harry shook his head, wishing he was more awake. "I know it seems like that, but..." How could he explain to Snape that he was nothing like any man he'd ever met? "You're like...you're like nothing I've ever known before."

Snape's face was blank, revealing nothing. Harry groaned in frustration. "Listen, I'm not stupid, alright? I know what kind of guy to use for sex, and you're just not like that." Harry was so caught up in his words, he couldn't tell what was reality and what wasn't, what he was saying because he wanted to catch Snape in his trap, and what he actually meant.

He told himself that he meant nothing.

"You know what my past was like, you know I haven't had the easiest time. I've had to grow up and learn how to survive really quickly." Harry shifted closer. "I know what I want. I'm not an experimenting teenager." Harry felt like he might cry again. _Shit._ "I've experimented enough."

Snape unclenched his fists in Harry's hands, but didn't move them. "I don't know," he said quietly.

Harry kissed his cheek impulsively. "Well did you like last night?" he asked, shifting still closer. Inexplicably, he still wanted to cry. He held back.

"That is not the issue."

"But did you like it?"

"That's not the point-"

"But did you like it?"

Snape pursed his lips before answering. "Yes," he mumbled.

Harry grinned. "And I liked it, and I'm not exactly a virgin either. I've been around...a few times, actually."

Snape rolled his eyes. "You should leave. Breakfast will start soon," he said, his eyes darting toward the clock.

"Oh, shit, it's Monday!" Harry remembered and scrambled out of bed to get dressed. He ran to the door, then doubled back to ram Snape into the bed with a dizzying kiss.

* * *

Even after the echo of Harry's departure from his rooms had disappeared, Severus still lay staring on his bed, breakfast and his Monday classes very far from his mind.

_What have I done?_

Nothing Harry said could convince him of his own innocence. He could not ignore how perfectly he fit into the boy's patterns. He wanted to, _fuck,_ he wanted to. He wanted looks like the ones had been aimed at him last night, he wanted kisses like the one he'd just received, without question and without pause.

* * *

It was as if leaving Snape's rooms had broken some sort of spell.

He was shifty and breathing hard on the way to breakfast and throughout the day, wondering what on Earth was wrong with him. Gone was the comfortable numb that had washed over him so many years ago, only to be replaced with something unexpected, something that changed and reshaped itself unpredictably in him, something dangerous.

"Where were you last night?" Theo asked after their first class. He was smiling and trying to act casual, easily becoming Harry's first victim.

"Theo," he started slowly, "I really suggest you stop following my every move like a lovesick puppy before people start to notice." The hurt look that Theo gave him seemed to sooth and burn Harry at the same time.

Theo gaped at him. "You-you know?"

Harry rolled his eyes, exasperated. "I'd have to be an idiot not to!" He stormed off, wanting to put as much space between himself and the boy's hurt expression as possible.

Snape was poisonous. If Harry needed anymore motivation to get him sacked, he had it.


	6. In Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes

**NOTE: **Wow, you know I always get impatient with authors when they update late and leave a note saying how sorry they are, but now I understand what's it's like! Anyway, really sorry this took so long! I was moving from the UK back to the States, so things were a little crazy but I won't bore you with excuses! There is some significant movement and action in this chapter, so I hope that makes it worth the wait! I'm going to be going back and correcting a lot of things, especially chapter titles, so this story is not set in stone as of now, because there are a lot of things I know I need to strange. So please feel free to leave feedback because it will be really helpful! Read, enjoy, and review! :D

* * *

_When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,_

_I all alone beweep my outcast state _

_And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries_

_And look upon myself and curse my fate, _

_Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, _

_Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,_

_Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, _

_With what I most enjoy contented least; _

_Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,_

_Haply I think on thee, and then my state, _

_Like to the lark at break of day arising _

_From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;_

_For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings_

_That then I scorn to change my state with kings._

_Sonnet XXIX by William Shakespeare_

* * *

There was a long, red mark on Snape's face that everyone stared at for the next few days in class. Snape made no mention of it, provided no information, just went on lecturing as if nothing had changed. The students avoided looking at it when they made eye contact, but Harry avoided it most of all. To him, it was a glaring reminder that what happened the other night had been real, that he'd hurt the man; a reminder of the wrong he was about to commit against him. His damage didn't usually leave so tangible a mark.

The boys kept speculating about what had happened to Snape, and Harry got so sick of it one day, he yelled "Just shut up about it!" They all gave him strange looks, thinking that he'd be the one most curious.

Realisation dawned on Draco's face. "Wait- you didn't...you didn't have anything to do with it did you?" Everyone was silent until Harry burst out laughing as if from the ridiculousness of the idea, asking "Are you mad?" The rest laughed with him and all was dismissed, although Draco still looked at Harry strangely. They never talked about it again.

There was so much noise in Harry's head. Not only had he had to deal with staring at Snape's mark for the passed week, but Theo would not speak to him. Actually, Theo wouldn't speak much to anybody. He floated on the outskirts of the gang like he might flee at any moment. Sometimes he stared at Harry like he might approach him and say something, but Harry made sure to avoid being alone with him. It would be too much to handle. He didn't want to hurt Theo more than he already had. He was a good kid.

Besides, he had other things to worry about. Like the fact that he'd cried three nights in a row after he'd left Snape's quarters that morning. And that he hadn't thought about sex since. And that he had the same nightmare, over and over. All about the same bloody thing.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled to Snape when he finally had the courage to stay after class and apologise. And more importantly, to continue with the plan.

Snape let Harry stand there in tortured silence for what felt like forever. "What are you talking about?" he finally asked.

"The- the scratch on your face. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Actually, if I recall correctly, that was exactly your intent."

Harry tried to keep from smiling, but failed miserably. "Okay, yeah, I suppose it was."

"Then what are you apologising for?"

Harry thought for a moment. Snape had a way of asking all the wrong questions. They always got to the heart of things. "For leaving a mark, I guess. I didn't mean to do that...well at least, I think I didn't mean to." Harry cursed himself for stumbling so much.

"You most likely meant that as well, I think." Harry didn't know how to respond to that, so he kept quiet.

"Can I help you with anything else?"

"No, I just wanted to say sorry about the mark, cause people have probably been bothering you about it, and-"

"Yes," Snape interrupted, not looking at him and the way he did it, or just that he did it at all made Harry's stomach twist in a way it never had before, "so stop bothering me about it."

Wind blew in from the small windows near the ceiling and ruffled the papers on Snape's desk. The noise of their shifting filled the room and the heavy awkwardness around them weighed on Harry more then ever. He couldn't stand it.

"Are you cross with me?" he blurted out.

Snape spared him a fleeting look. "No."

"Then why-why-" He didn't want to ramble but with the way Snape was staring at him and giving him nothing to talk about it, he was finding it hard to find a reason to stay in the room. He didn't even know why he needed to stay in the room. "Why won't you talk to me?" he finally got out.

"I am speaking to you," Snape insisted, shifting his stance and his gaze, fingers brushing the edges of his desk.

"Not like you usually do, you usually ask me loads of questions and insult me underhandedly, and, and-"

"You're nervous."

Harry stopped and sputtered, trying to take in the fact Snape had thrown at him and shake off the frustration with being interrupted again. He wanted more than anything to walk out of the room, but something kept his feet glued to the floor.

"Yes! I am-"

"Why?"

"Because I just- you make me-" Harry let out a growl of frustration he didn't know he was capable of and stormed out the room. Snape smirked after him.

* * *

_Harry was breathing blue._

_He lie in bed like that, unaware, until the darkness spoke around him, shifting its fat hands and knees over him, into him. Harry, it said._

_Over him, into him._

_Harry. Harry..._

"Harry!" Someone was shaking him awake, whisper yelling his name, the bed curtains closed around them. He gasped and started, blindly throwing his fists at whoever it was in defense.

"Ha-what are you doing? Harry, it's me, Theo! Calm down, it was only a dream! You don't want to wake everyone up do you?"

The cloud of terrorized sleep wouldn't lift in the darkness, it was smothering in its hold on him. He twisted desperate fingers into Theo's night shirt, pulling him toward him. The denseness of his body helped wring Harry back to the present. He buried his face in Theo's chest and the warm wet his tears created, the frantic heart beating beneath his ear the only thing keeping him grounded.

He made no sound at all except for the stray whimper. He fell into a pattern of waking up and falling back asleep all night until Theo moved out from the tight circle of his arms. He lay awake until dawn, realising for the first time that he'd passed three weeks worth of sleeps in this nightmarishly saturated and spare way.

* * *

Another week passed and the students at Hogwarts were becoming antsier and antsier to leave for Christmas break. Some were genuinely pleased to see their families, some were taking extravagant holidays in tropical places to get away from their families, some dreaded going home, and there were a few, of which Harry was included, that didn't have a home to miss or a family to hate.

But Harry still looked forward to Christmas for the special solitude it afforded him and the beauty that the castle seemed to develop when it's corridors were silent and it's classrooms empty.

And this year, there would be Snape. This was the main concern occupying Harry's mind during double Biology, when the class was bustling around the lab, completing the final practical assignment before the break. The lab was in the back of the classroom, and Snape sat all the way at the front, silently completing paperwork. Harry was in a group with Theo and Draco, and Draco was doing most of the work, too meticulous to trust either of the other boys to do anything right.

While leaning lazily on a lab bench, with his elbow holding his head up, Harry was interrupted from his thoughts with a hot whisper at his ear.

"Can we talk?" Theo. God.

Harry didn't spare him a look. "About?"

There was a pause and Harry smirked in the awkward fumbling that was no doubt happening in Theo's head.

"You're really going to pretend that nothing happened?" He sounded angry.

Harry rolled his eyes, absolutely sick of Theo's attention. "God, I wish you could see yourself. You're pathetic."

He heard the sound of glass clinking together, and suddenly, there were nails at his throat. Snape left his field of vision. There was an inhuman roar from above him as he crashed down to the lab floor. He felt something crack near his chest and he gasped, an excruciating pain radiating from that part of him and seeming to reach all parts.

He heard the other boys, voices indistinct, shout vaguely, but mostly it was just Theo or something terrible he'd brought out of that sweet boy, repeatedly yelling in his face "I hate you! I hate you, I hate..." his voice trembling with desperate rage. And then, Theo punched his collarbone.

Harry screamed.

When he felt like he was going to be sick, Theo was being pulled off him. He immediately turned on his side, trying not to vomit.

"Are you insane?" He heard Snape yelling. Harry looked up in time to see Blaise shove Theo into a bench. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Theo breathed hard, and said nothing, just stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut loudly behind him. Harry couldn't care less where he'd gone as it had just started getting painful for him to breathe.

Snape, and a few others were over him at once. "Where did he hit you?"

"I think he broke something!"

"Where does it hurt?"

"My-my shoulder," Harry shut his eyes tight against the pain. "I can't move my arm."

Snape looked at Blaise. "Call Madame Pomfrey."

* * *

Blaise and Draco left his bedside when Madame Pomfrey announced it was time for bed and shut the lights of the infirmary. Harry wasn't sorry because he was tired and slightly woozy from the painkillers he'd been given after the nurse had set his arm and put it in a sling. And besides that, he had plans. What Theo had done to him was incredibly unnerving- had he really turned the sweetest, most mild tempered boy he knew into a complete monster?

He waited until he was sure the woman had left and gone to her quarters, until he'd heard the last drawer and door close, the last jingle of keys. When his feet touched the floor, his entire spine seemed to shiver from the cold and made him remember the snow outside. He tried to hunch his shoulders closer together as he padded quietly out of the room, but pain shot into his shoulder and he relaxed them again.

But when he opened the door, there was dark figure there, waiting.

Harry gasped and clutched his fist to his heart.

Theo stepped into the light.

Tears filled his eyes immediately, the image, the fear, reminding him of so many things, so many nights spent waiting and watching and wondering why, why him, why then, why ever. And many more nights spent remembering. Pictures and thoughts and fear whistled through him because he was empty. Or at least he wished he was.

He punched the boy in the arm. "You scared the shit out of me!" he whisper yelled, making sure his voice didn't tremble. His heart was still racing.

Theo's eyes were red, his face pale. "I'm so sorry, Harry! I don't know what's wrong with me! I wasn't thinking."

Harry sighed. "You fucking broke my collar bone, Theo," he said, but if he was honest, he couldn't even bring himself to be angry.

"I have no idea how that happened! I didn't mean to hurt you so much, I swear..."

Harry looked at the floor. "Just shut up, okay? It's fine."

Theo swallowed. "What?"

Harry suddenly realised how much noise they must be making and stepped out of the infirmary and closed the door behind him. "I said it's fine!"

Theo paused. "Really?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yes! I was probably being an arsehole anyway. I deserved it."

Theo still looked shocked. "Really?" he asked again. "You've never..."

"Apologised for anything in my entire bloody life? Yeah, I know. Listen, I can't do this right now, okay? Can we talk later?"

Theo swallowed again but looked much calmer. "Yeah, okay."

"Thanks."

"Night."

Harry slipped off into the opposite direction and was grateful Theo seemed to know not to ask any questions or was too distracted to.

When Harry got to the corridor he'd been in before to visit Snape, he couldn't remember which door it had been. Just as he had narrowed his choices down and was deciding between two, the one just behind him creaked open. He spun around so quickly that it hurt his arm and he winced.

A sliver of Snape looked back at him through the crack in the door. They stood there, saying nothing to each other for a moment, until Snape opened the door wider in invitation.

When Harry was safely inside and the door was closed, Snape put his fingers to the plasters on Harry's throat. "I'm not the only one sporting wounds now," he said softly.

Harry smiled and his eyes darted to every corner of Snape's unconventionally handsome face as they could reach. "Yeah," he mumbled, "Can you believe what he did?"

"Depends on what you did to him."

Harry snorted and looked away. "You know me well, apparently," he said bitterly.

Snape turned away from him and went to sit by the dimming fire. "Whatever you did, I still want to ripe his throat out."

Harry suddenly felt giddy. "Really?" Then Snape shifted away on the settee when Harry sat too close and the giddiness retreated back into whatever hole it had come from.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"I told him I knew he fancied me and that he was being painfully obvious about it. Then I ignored and avoided him for about a month, and when he approached me about it, I called him pathetic."

Snape pursed his lips and nodded. "Yes, that would do it."

"I just- I didn't know it was hurting him that much," Harry said, feeling the need to justify himself.

"Understandable," Snape nodded again. "You don't even believe that anyone could really fancy you that much, do you?"

"Stop psychoanalysing everything I say! And of course I believe someone could fancy me that much, I'm fucking gorgeous!"

"If you didn't want to be psychoanalysed you would not have come here since that is practically all I do to you. And I am not referring to anything physical. Everyone's well aware that you're 'fucking gorgeous,'" Snape mocked.

"God, I hate you," Harry said passionlessly. "Ever since you stepped into this fucking school all I want to do cry and be cuddled all the time."

Snape smirked. "Everyone needs a good cuddle from time to time."

"Can we go to bed soon?"

"How presumptuous! What makes you think I'll let you near my bedroom and not send you back to the hospital wing where you belong?"

Harry huffed. "I don't have the patience for this, I thought I made it subtly clear I want to cuddle."

Snape's brow furrowed. "I'm going to skip the lecture on why nothing can be subtly clear, and just say that it would be very difficult for you to spend the night here, considering Madame Pomfrey will have kittens if she finds you gone from your bed tomorrow morning."

"I've already thought of that, I'll sneak out before dawn."

"And what makes you think I'll allow you in my bed at all?"

Harry kissed him, soft and slow and repeatedly.

* * *

Not half an hour later, Harry was happily ensconced in Snape's thick blankets as the the older man struggled with the old television he'd pushed into the corner of the room for lack of use.

"Can't believe you don't watch television," Harry said, yawning. "Greatest invention ever."

Snape was trying to plug the thing in. "Bloody stupid contraption," he mumbled. "Why am I doing this again?"

"It comforts me."

Snape rolled his eyes and turned on the telly, approaching the bed with the remote. Q.I. was on. He turned off the lamp and climbed in behind Harry, who was lying on his good side. Harry budged backwards until he felt Snape flush behind him, which made him think of sex.

Which reminded him of how strange this situation was. "I used to- I used to sleep in the living room when I lived with my family," he said slowly, as he watched Stephen Fry present some puzzle involving a triangle. "When I could, because there at least all my uncle could do was hit me."

Snape kissed his neck. "Is your uncle here?" he asked.

Harry's brow furrowed and he reached blindly to grab Snape's arm and put it around him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Is your uncle here with you now?"

"No," Harry said and saying it made him feel good.

"Then why on Earth does he matter?"

Harry twisted around and pulled Snape down toward him, kissing him fiercely. They fumbled awkwardly around Harry's shoulder, but that made him all the more randy. Snape snaked a hand between them and under Harry's pajama shirt. It stayed there for a while, running over Harry's ribs, playing with his nipples, his belly button. It raked over his heart and even went up to throat where Snape grasped and controlled, sure movements pushing the barriers of the fragile goods it handled.

* * *

Snape's mouth was still like a hot rod at his neck half an hour later, his body still pressed close and exquisitely smothering behind him. Snape's hands pulled at him, Harry pushed back into him, searching for and finding that wonderful hardness. They breathed together, rocked against each other, and it was neither hasty nor desperate, just comfortable and completely, completely delicious.

"I really like," Harry sighed, "the way you touch me."

Snape said nothing, just hummed into his skin, and that was better. Harry had tried multiple times to reach behind him for Snape's cock, but Snape wasn't having it. He was still almost unbearably frigid when it came to sex.

When Harry finally spends himself and fumes inside over the fact that Snape hasn't, and probably won't while he's around, he asks him petulantly, "Why won't let me?"

"Oh, stop whinging," Snape said, exasperated. After a moment, he finished, "You know why."

"So stupid," he complained.

"I don't like that word being used in reference to me," Snape cut in icily.

"Then stop doing stupid- no, no, I'm kidding!" Harry broke in laughing and grabbed Snape to keep him from moving further away from him, still in a daze from his particularly good orgasm.

Harry split his attention for the next few hours of the early morning on the telly and on Snape, whose eyes and body had quickly begun to droop. The sun was coming up cold, lighting up the frosted windows.

Harry didn't want Snape to fall asleep, feeling as though something terrible would happen the moment he drifted off, so he asked "Have you ever done something really, really terrible?"

Snape's eyes stayed closed. "Irredeemably terrible?" he said slowly.

"Yeah, like that."

A pause. "Yes."

"What did you do?"

Snape shifted beneath the covers, curling away from Harry. "I'd rather not discuss it."

"Have you gotten over it?"

"Yes, I think so. Must we talk about this now?" Snape seemed both genuinely uncomfortable with the subject and very, very sleepy.

Harry persisted. "How?"

Snape sighed deeply and it became a yawn. He was silent, and for a moment, Harry thought he wouldn't answer. Then, he said, "I gave up expecting life to be a certain way."

Harry's brow furrowed and he brought his hand around to touch Snape's face, carefully, afraid he might bite. "I don't understand."

"That's the way it seems to be with these things. You never really understand until you get it for yourself. I think what you're asking," Snape yawned again, "is if I forgave myself."

"Yes," Harry breathed, tracing the shape of Snape's strange nose.

"I did."

Harry shook his head, thinking of himself, thinking of Theo, of Draco, of that boy he'd terrorized into wanting to leave Hogwarts, thinking of Snape, of every sorry soul that had the misfortune to come across his. "How could you?"

"It was the only logical thing to do."

"How d'you mean?"

Snape finally opened his eyes. They glittered, sleepiness all but gone. "I tried not forgiving myself for a long time, and I was miserable. I tried to make it up, I tried to give back, I tried to sacrifice, until I was sacrificing too much, until I wasn't living for myself anymore. And it was either keep doing that until I'd been withered to nothing or forgive myself and move on."

Harry's hand retreated from Snape's face. His throat burned. "What if you deserve to whither to nothing?"

Snape lifted the remote and turned the television off. "Then you still haven't forgiven yourself."


	7. O me! What Eyes Hath Love Put in My Head

**AN: **Okay, so I know I took forever to update. I could give you a bunch of excuses, but I won't :). Hope you all enjoy this, sorry if there are any mistakes, again I'm editing this at a later date. There was a bit of experimentation with this chapter so please let me know if that works for you or not in a review, I would really appreciate the feedback :D A LOT happens in this chapter, being number 7 and all, so I hope that makes up for the wait! Enjoy (hopefully)! _  
_

* * *

_O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head,_

_Which have no correspondence with true sight;_

_Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,_

_That censures falsely what they see aright?_

_If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,_

_What means the world to say it is not so?_

_If it be not, then love doth well denote_

_Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,_

_How can it? O! how can Love's eye be true, _

_That is so vexed with watching and with tears?_

_No marvel then, though I mistake my view;_

_The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears._

_O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,_

_Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find._

_William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLVIII_

* * *

"Nothing feels right anymore. I feel like he's, like he's the only one that understands what goes on in my head, like he sees right through me and I never have to explain myself or hide or," Harry grips the porcelain rim of the sink with one hand until his knuckles are white and squeezes his eyes shut. Hangs his head. "or feel like I can't, like I can't breath, like right now, like- fuck-"

He trips over his words as he fumbles with his grasp of the porcelain sink and grasps again, desperate to hold in, to hold back.

There is a noise behind him.

A footstep in a damp spot on the floor, an echo, the door closing with a swish and snap. Harry immediately thinks of his incriminating red eyes. He looks in the mirror and sees Draco behind him.

"Harry?" Draco says and in retrospect it might have been that word, that godforsaken name, so pliant and used and tired from Draco's mouth that made him so angry. "What's wrong?"

Harry's response is just as instant as the question. "Mind your own fucking business."

Draco says nothing and for a moment all the noise there is is water from the facet running. Then, Harry hears the sneer in Draco's voice. "God, I would have thought what happened with Theo last week would have taught you how to be less of an arsehole."

Harry's laugh is bitter and humourless. With his next words, he feels like a snake, sinking its fangs mercilessly into tender flesh. "If fucking your dad didn't teach me that, nothing will."

He looks up and watches Draco's face in the mirror. His pale features contort in confusion. Harry's arm twitches in its sling.

"What?" he whispers.

Harry bites his lip. "I fucked your dad. Your dad fucks sixteen-year-old boys. I bet I was just one of them." He turns to face the other boy, feeling like a performer. "It was that New Year's party you invited me to last year. I remember coming downstairs right after and kissing your mother goodnight," he smiled "it was so hilarious."

Harry prepares for the pain. Draco takes longer to get to him than he expects. He grabs him by the hair and pulls him forward before thrusting his head toward the rim of the basin. Harry falls, his slung shoulder hitting the ground, hot blood shooting from his nose.

He cries out so loudly and for so long, he cannot recognise his own voice. He rolls to his other side, desperate to escape his own body, to move, to breathe. It is worse than what Theo did to him a thousand times over. It is more than what he bargained for.

But still, it was a reprieve.

He rolls again and Draco's face appears above him, blurry and far away. He spits in Harry's face and steps over him to leave.

Harry doesn't feel it. He can't feel anything.

* * *

Hermione gasps when she sees him. "Harry!"

"Hermione!" He throws back, in falsetto.

"What happened?" She drops her briefcase on the floor carelessly, and rushes to her chair across from him to get a better look at his bruised, barley healed face.

"Well, nothing really, I just got out of maths-"

She huffs and waves away his words. "You know what I mean! You broke your shoulder?" she asks, eyeing his sling.

"Fractured it," he says, "and then re-fractured it," he laughs. "Some people were a little upset with me."

"A little?" She purses her lips, still examining his face.

Harry shrugs, not knowing what else to say to her. She wouldn't understand, even if he could explain.

* * *

He stares into the fireplace at night, elbow on the arm of his chair ,and nobody speaks to him.

Except tonight. Ron Weasley sits within his field of vision, a stupid grin on his face. It's the same grin that he's been giving Harry when they pass each other in corridors, or make eye contact in class.

Harry spares him a look, but doesn't say anything to him.

"You wanna know why I'm so fucking chuffed?" Weasley has the nerve to say to him in the middle of the common room.

Harry says nothing, but turns his head toward Weasley, listening.

"Because you finally look as rotten on the outside as you are on the inside."

Harry looks back at the fire, not really seeing anything.

* * *

Harry can feel Snape resisting questioning him, and waits for the day that he will break.

It is a Thursday when he does, calling him back from the gang of boys eagerly crowding out of the classroom. Harry shivers when he hears that deep voice mold so perfectly over the syllables of his name as he calls it.

Snape shuts the door and instead of leaning on his desk as per usual, he stands in front of and close to Harry, staring at him, almost touching. Harry breathes him in.

"Who did that to you?" He's staring, hard. Angry.

"It doesn't matter," Harry gulps, overwhelmingly ashamed. He deserved everything. From Draco, from Theo...and from Snape. Especially from Snape.

Snape's eyes steel, harder then before. "You're going to tell me exactly who did that to you and after I get him expelled, I'm going to break his head open."

Harry shook his head. "I didn't tell Dumbledore who did it and I'm not telling you. I fell, okay?"

Snape's eyes widened in disbelief. "Dumbledore let you get away with that sorry excuse of a lie? A fall re-fractured your shoulder and gave you a black eye?"

"It's been known to happen."

Snape shook his head, furious. "This is unreal. There is no way any student at this school should be allowed to get away with that."

"It's real. It's happened. Get over it," Harry says, but puts his finger in the belt loop of Snape's trousers. Snape grabs his wrist and pulls him closer. "Tell me. I won't say anything. Just tell me so I know who to fail," he breaths near Harry's ear, Harry's mouth.

"No," Harry buries his face in Snape's neck, and it hurts a little, but it's still so good. "All that shit I went through to get Dumbledore off my back will be for nothing." _And you'll hate me if you know what I did to him_, he doesn't say. _What I'm about to do to you._ "But I might tell you if you let me come to your room tonight," he says slyly, insides churning.

Snape moves away. Harry's stomach flutters nervously. Snape looks him in the eye. _Right through me._

Then, he snorts. "I'm surprised you asked and didn't just come barging in like the last time."

Harry's shoulders relaxed and he smirked. "I did not barge."

Snape runs his thumb over the tip of his nose in what Harry thinks is an impulsive movement. He walks back to stand behind his desk. "Around 8 o'clock?" he says, nonchalant.

Harry smiles, burning inside. "8 o'clock."

* * *

"Harry?"

When, Gregory comes to him just before he is to see Snape, Harry is in the Great Hall, thinking, thinking.

"Harry!" He finally snaps out of it and sees Gregory's large hand waving in his face. "Sorry," he mumbles and lets the other boy take him aside, away from the other boys. "So. What did he say?"

Harry blinked. "Yeah, yeah I'll be in his rooms. 8 o'clock."

"When do you want me?"

"Fifteen minutes past" he replied. He didn't want to give himself time to change his mind.

Gregory nodded and hesitated before leaving him. "Harry...are you sure you want to do this? There's still time..."

Air seems to fill his chest and he is tempted to call everything off, to forget it happened, to forget everything. Then, he remembers what it feels like when he hasn't seen Snape in private for more than three days, the brief flash of hatred on Draco Malfoy's reflected face, the familiar comforts of loss and failure and suffering.

"No. Do it."

* * *

"What was Mr. Goyle saying to you at dinner?"

They're entwined on the settee, and Harry wishes he'd told Gregory to wait longer. "Nothing. Why?" Harry said, kissing his forehead to distract him from the lie and the jolt he felt when Snape mentioned Gregory's name.

"You seemed upset."

Snape's face is in his neck. His breathe, his soft, almost nonexistent kisses sends chills down his spine, so he presses closer to the man, trying to get rid of that feeling. He lets out a sound that's part giggle, part moan, part whimper.

* * *

The noise Harry releases makes Severus's cock twitch and his heart sing.

He extracts himself from the imprint his made in Harry's arms, his body, and kisses him. Harry pants hard around his face for a second and does a strange, excited jig in his lap. It makes him even harder, and reminds him of stupid, childish things that make people happy like puppies.

He grabs one bent, slim wrist, pale with the winter. Tightens his grasp for control. Over himself, or Harry, he can't be sure. His student breaks away from his lips and gasps harshly, like his been burned and rolls his hips and Severus couldn't ask him what was wrong even if he tried.

He rises from his seat, taking Harry with him, fumbling, tripping under his weight at first, with Harry squealing and hastening to locks his limbs around him in surprise, then smoothly striding to the bedroom. When he lays him down, he can tell Harry thinks this is the moment, this is when they'll fuck, but Severus knows better, thinks he knows everything.

* * *

_Ah ha,_ Harry thinks, only half-triumphantly as Snape lays him down. This is the moment he'll be proven right. When Snape will be _just like the rest._ Harry reaches for the man's belt and undoes it.

A hand comes around his wrist. "You will not be getting lucky tonight, Mr. Potter," is mumbled into his mouth as Snape hovers over him to kiss him, back hunched, keeping their bodies apart. Harry is taken by surprise for a moment, taken adrift.

Then, he remembers. His eyes snap open, and he pushes himself up and against Snape to look at the clock on the wall, never breaking their kiss and it hurts some because their teeth clink. Gregory will be prompt. And he has fifteen seconds.

He takes three seconds to savor what Snape's body feels like against him. Pinned, pried open, deprived. The way he makes him feel with his words. With his looks.

Then, he turns his head fast, breaking their kiss, wriggling and twisting out of Snape's hold. Snape tries to hang on, but eventually lets go. Harry bounces and climbs off the bed and his bare feet scrape and press into the wooden floor. He sprints and hops to just outside the threshold of the bedroom. Snape is watching him, he can feel it.

He looks at him one last time, while things are still normal and cool and fine. Snape is standing, and the look on his face halts every beam of energy in Harry's body. He stands still, watches the terrible way Snape smiles at him while lines of confusion and questions crease his forehead. He watches and regrets.

Then, there is a knock on the door, three to be exact. Short and concise, and Harry feels them like a knoll in his body, full and everywhere.

* * *

The knock on the door freezes the smile he'd been vulnerable enough to let slip.

He sees Harry's face look away from him, sees the turn in the pad of his foot against the floor, prepared to run. For a second he cannot believe even Harry could be so careless.

Harry disappears from the doorway and Severus grabs a bed post, propelling himself forward and after him, yelling "NO!"

But when he slips quickly outside the bedroom, Harry is already at the front door, hand turning the nob, twisting, the sound like knives in Severus's ear.

The door swings open and reveals Albus Dumbledore and Gregory Goyle, who Severus, in a bizarre manner of delaying facing reality, recalls is always three seats back and two to the right from Harry in his class, and fails all his tests, and...

Was speaking to Harry at dinner in the Great Hall. He remembers the flare of unwarranted jealousy, as he leaned close to his precious student, remembers the look on Harry's face.

He feels Dumbledore's eyes roaming his figure, his and Harry's disheveled clothes and hair, his half undone belt...

He does nothing but stare at Harry the entire way out, Albus's hand like a clasp at the back of his neck.


	8. To Thy Sweet Self Too Cruel

**AN: **Okay, so I wanted this chapter to be longer and more fulfilling, but I decided that since it's been so long, I should just give it to you know and save the rest for later. Hope you enjoy, but I doubt you will, because it's just a sad chapter lol, one of those. And also, if you haven't been reading the sonnets, I recommend you read this one; it's so fitting (I always try to make them as fitting as possible) and so beautiful (they're all so beautiful!). Okay, enjoy (or not) and please review (or not)!

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

_William Shakespeare, Sonnet I _

* * *

He shook his head. "I did something really bad." He couldn't look at Hermione.

"Harry, Headmaster Dumbledore told me what happened. You don't have to explain, Professor Snape is the only one to blame."

This made the tears come faster. He put his face in his hands. "No! You don't understand. I lied! I lied about everything. I- we didn't even have sex! He never even let me touch him!"

There was a pause and Harry was practically panting. "I don't understand," she whispered.

Harry growled, the sound tearing angry and wounded from his throat. "I set him up," he said pathetically. "I just said those things to get him fired. I made sure we got caught."

He looked up at her. She had covered her mouth with one hand, and her brow furrowed. She moved her hand. "But...Harry. If you still had a...relationship outside of the classroom, he would have gotten in trouble anyway. Deserved to get in trouble," she finished.

"You don't understand!" he repeated. "It was so innocent. He doesn't-" he took a deep breathe "he's in fucking prison, Hermione, for kissing me!"

Harry wondered why it was taking so long for her to speak, why she was pausing so long, making him wait, wait. "Harry, are you saying nothing of a sexual nature occurred between you and Professor Snape?"

"Yes." He squeezed his eyes shut tight. "God, yes. That's what I'm saying."

She paused again, her eyebrows raising slightly, surprised but not. "Harry, I hope you realise what this means. Your false accusation could cost you your place at this school."

Harry looked at her and wished he didn't because he could see the pity in her eyes. "I don't care. I don't- I just need to make things right."

Hermione rises from her chair and stands near the window to stare out onto Hogwarts's vast grounds. She shook her head, slowly. "Harry...I can tell you feel really sorry for what you've done," she seems hesitant but plunges on. "If you want, I won't...I mean if Professor Dumbledore expels you...there's nothing left for you out there," she turns to face him "but foster families and group homes. You're really smart, Harry, you could do something with your life-"

"And just leave Snape to rot in jail for however long they decide to keep him there and then never be able to get a decent job for the rest of his life?" he spat, stomach turning in self-disgust.

"They can't keep him in prison too long if you don't press charges," she said, almost as an after thought. "But, you're right. And if you decide to tell the truth, I'll support you." She purses her lips, and her resolve strengthens. "And if you decide not too, I'd understand that too," she nodded.

Nothing in the room, or even outside made a sound, for what seemed like minutes on end.

"I can deal with foster families," he said, finally. "But I just can't bear the thought of him suffering because of me. No one deserves-" He buried his face in his hands and stopped; couldn't say more.

* * *

Harry sat by the lake the day Professor Dumbledore expelled him.

He watched the water pass over the stones and the moss on the stones and the pieces of broken trees fallen and stuck in the muck of the undergrowth. He watched the way the water lapped up the snow around it, the way water gave way to water and the rest of it. He thought about how his life had been like the lake at Christmas, iced over, quiet and still, with unbearably cold life passing, breathing, pushing underneath. Pushing to get out. Just waiting for someone to step on his weakest point. Always ready to swallow, to drown. To consume.

Ron Weasley sat beside him in the snow.

"You're so obnoxious," Harry told him. "I heard you coming from like a mile away, sniffling and stomping around. How did you even find me?"

"It wasn't very hard," Weasley said, his voice muffled by his scarf. "You're the only git sitting by the lake in a shit load of snow."

Harry could feel the other boy was examining his tear frozen face and it made him want to punch him in the face. If he had had any energy, he probably would. "Go on. Gloat about how I got what I deserved, how happy you are I'm leaving."

Weasley snorted. "You definitely did get what was coming to you. You're an arsehole."

"Wow, thanks. That totally made this day better. What would I do without you?" He rolled his eyes through the tears and resisted the urge to sniff.

His classmate ignored him, continued as if he'd never spoken. "I just never knew you knew."

Harry wanted to cry again. He felt like such a fucking girl, lately. "What does that mean?"

"You know you're an arsehole. And that's...good."

Harry wanted to laugh, but again, no energy. He was sapped of everything. "Is this your idea of a heart to heart?"

Weasley said nothing and Harry said something he thought he'd never have the balls too. But with him it seemed alright, because Weasley seemed to know nothing of him. "I really liked him," came the rushed words.

Weasley snorted. "Yeah, really shows."

It was like a slap, and Harry laughed suddenly, loudly, a short, broken burst. He tried to keep still, but his brow contorted and more tears warmed the cooled tracks on his face. He wanted to say something scathing back, but he knew it would sound too broken to really have any weight. "Can you just leave me alone?" he settles for instead. "You really have been no help at all."

Weasley stood up from his spot, and Harry spared a look at the fresh snow he's crushed under him. "It's getting dark," he said as he wiped himself off. "We should go up."

He was right. The sky was that crisp azure you only see in deep sea water. But Harry wasn't ready to face Hogwarts yet. Hogwarts, his only true home, and now it was expelling him, like a parasite being flicked off its host. Only a matter of time, he thought bitterly.

"Just go away," Harry told him. Weasley listened without much pause.

* * *

Hermione's home was warm, and very, very clean. Harry knew that if he'd turned over everything in the apartment, he probably wouldn't find a speck of dust. Everything in the kitchen, where they sat in the winter sunlight that came in from her small windows, shined. The silver spoon sitting near the sugar bowl on the tea tray was spotless.

"I'm sorry," she said into the silence between them. "You, leaving, that must have been hard."

Harry smiled. "You must pity me so much. To have helped me like that, and everything." Hermione had visited Hogwarts much more than was required of her the last week of school before the holidays and before Harry was due to leave for good. She'd helped him pack his things, even helped him settle into his new group home in Edinburgh, where she lived.

Hermione scoffed. "Oh, Harry! That is so bloody ridiculous! Why does someone being kind to you have to mean that all the time?"

"It's not that it has to mean that, it just does," Harry said, looking away from her, eyes trained to the way the sunlight hit the table. It was warm and beautiful, but Harry felt so old and rotten inside. He felt disconnected from everything, like he was watching the way the world worked from the outside, a bored, numbed spectator.

Hermione reached for his hand. The feel of her skin against his, human contact, made him think of his cold bed back at the group home, how he had to fend people away from it and him, being so disgusted as he was with everyone but Severus Snape. Her hand over his, like a boulder holding him in place, made him want to cry. But he was a tapped out well. There was nothing left.

He said it. "There's nothing left." Small, raspy.

"Harry," Hermione pleads, "Harry, please don't say that! It's not true! There's just something so good about you, that's why I helped you. That's why you intrigued me like no one else. There's just something about you, Harry. Please, you can't give up hope." She started to cry. Weep, really.

Harry finally looked her in the eye. His chair scarped violently against the kitchen floor as he rushed out of it to wrap his arms around Hermione. "What is wrong with you?" he muttered into her bushy, brown hair. "You don't even know me. Why are you crying for me, you silly girl?"

"Because," she chokes out between sobs, "because you're so brave. You're so brave, Harry."

Harry tightened his grip on her and froze. He wanted to believe her.

Slowly, he realised the pain that the awkwardness of their position has caused him, and he straightened up out of his crouch and sat back in his chair. Hermione hastily wiped the tears from her face, obviously embarrassed. "God, I'm sorry," she mumbled and sniffled.

"I suppose what I'm trying to say," she plunges on, "is that I get why you did what you did. Even though it was horrible and unfair to Snape, I get it. You were getting back at the people in your past-"

"Don't you dare try to dissect me," Harry shot back, his anger spiking for the first time in weeks. "Its more complicated than all that. I'm more than just a fucking abused teenage case study." I love him, he doesn't say.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound that way. Just- listen. I have an offer for you."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her. He was weary, but his interest was peaked. He liked Hermione, despite her irritating earnestness. "Go on."

"Well," she started, and looked away, "I need a roommate."

* * *

About a month later, Harry was sleeping in Hermione's extra bedroom.

One evening, after a particularly long bout of application filling in Edinburgh's shops and restaurants, he came home and the disappointment and the cold had seemed to seep through his jacket, soaking him, a wetness and a crushing ache, bone deep.

He could already sense Hermione was out as he walked through the dark, flicking on any light he could, making all the noise he could, so sick from the emptiness of the apartment in the dark night, he could vomit. He opened the one dinky light in his own bedroom, and the sight of it was so sad he almost had to turn his face away. Him and Hermione had pushed one of her couches into the center because of it had a sofa bed. Harry couldn't afford a mattress, much less a bed frame. Or anything, actually. The sofa bed was perpetually pulled out, and there were some clothes and shoes strewn here and there. Otherwise, everything else was bare. The walls, bare.

Harry usually dropped into bed the moment he came in the door, so he wouldn't have to stare at the sheets too long. Their whiteness, the creases in them, the way they looked so damn abandoned all the time. They reminded him of Snape.

He shut the light off again almost immediately, just the smallest glimpse of white sheets sending him back. But he knew it was no use. He stumbled to the bed, tripping over himself in his rush, and surrendered to the cold sheets, burrowing his face in them, not even bothering to take off his shoes or coat or anything. He just got under the blankets, trying to remember.

Snape...

His skin was threatening to forget the feel of his, melding and bending into the memory of a hundred other men's touches, memories Harry would give up in an instant to be able to feel Snape breathe half a breath over any part of him, to hear Snape give voice to one vaguely endearing thought, to once again be the object of such genuine and subtle affection, to move and be moved by a man so seemingly immovable.

He grabbed the only pillow he had, smothering his face in it and screamed; heaved dry, dry sobs, suddenly grateful that the flat was empty.


	9. O, that you were yourself!

_O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are_

_No longer yours than you yourself here live:_

_Against this coming end you should prepare,_

_And your sweet semblance to some other give._

_So should that beauty which you hold in lease_

_Find no determination: then you were_

_Yourself again after yourself's decease,_

_When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear._

_Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,_

_Which husbandry in honour might uphold_

_Against the stormy gusts of winter's day_

_And barren rage of death's eternal cold?_

_O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know_

_You had a father: let your son say so._

_William Shakespeare, Sonnet XIII_

* * *

"Nothing's enough," Harry said, his head lolling backwards, his feet stretched toward the telly.

"How do you mean?" Hermione answers, putting her fingers in Harry's hair from her position above him on the couch. Hermione provided this kind of friendly, caring, physical contact sometimes (once she new Harry liked her too much to rip her head off) and Harry would admit it to no one, but he liked it. He swallowed. "I dunno, don't listen to me. Listen to Gary," he said, pointing to the BBC anchor on the telly.

Hermione paused, her fingers still moving. "I can hear you thinking about whether to let that go or not," he said.

"Sorry," she said, laughing in a breathy, nervous way.

"It's okay," he said. "It's sweet."

She breathed deep. "How was work?"

"It was okay. Dropped a lot of things, but no one really cared." Harry has started working at bar in town, within walking distance of Hermione's flat. He didn't know he would have gotten the job if Hermione hadn't exploited the crush that the owner had for her. "My feet fucking hurt," he moaned, pulling one into his lap.

"Well," she started, sliding down to the floor next to him, "At least you can start buying things for your room."

"True," he said, yawning.

"Harry?"

Harry didn't like the sound of that. It was never good, never ever good. He pulled his legs in toward his chest and rested his head against his knees. "Yes?"

"I needed the white pages for something today and I found them in your room."

Harry snorted. "Just say it, Hermes."

"I'm not accusing you of anything, I'm just asking." Her voice was gentle, soft. She wasn't as nervous as she used to be when she talked to him, and for that Harry was proud of her, in a way.

"Well, I'm not hiding it. I'm looking for him," he said, avoiding the name, the damn name.

"What do you plan to do if you find him?"

"I have no idea. Apologise, I suppose, but I don't even know if he'll give me the chance."

She didn't say anything, and she didn't need to. Harry knew she'd come to the same conclusion; not bloody likely. "Maybe you could write him a letter, just in case he doesn't let you."

Harry felt his heart swell with affection for her. He turned to look at her, grinning. "So you think it's a good idea?"

Hermione smiled. "I think if you're ready to face him, than yes, it's a good idea."

Harry folded his legs under him, like a little boy. "I'm glad you feel that way because unless he lives in Edinburgh, I have no idea how I'll find him in the white pages."

Hermione's eyebrows raised. "Oh, I see."

"Please, Hermione," he begged before she had the chance to say no.

She shook her head but she was still smiling. "Harry, all that stuff is supposed to be confidential, I can't just hand it over."

Harry sighed, and pretended to frown. "Oh, shut up," she said laughing. "You know you'll have it by tomorrow."

If Harry knew how to be as friendly-intimate, if it came to him as naturally as it did to Hermione, he would have done something. He didn't know how to touch anyone in a way that wasn't sexual. It was once-in-a-while musings like that that sucked all of the color out of things, like Hermione's smile, and the delicious domesticity of the couch and the telly.

"You're the best, Hermione," he said instead, staring at nothing.

"I know."

* * *

Harry spilled more beer than usual as he handed one man his drink. "Sorry," he muttered.

"No worries," the man replied, giving Harry a look that Harry knew all too well. He wondered if this would be the first night he'd have to tell someone he wasn't interested.

He should have expected this, to feel this way, to have to deal with it, but he hadn't and he wondered how many more men and women there would be like this one, how many nights. How many nights?

* * *

When Harry got home, the first thing he caught sight of was the back of a fiery, red head.

"Harry!" Hermione barreled out of the kitchen and into the hall way.

"Hermione!" Harry mimicked, staring at Ron Weasley as he turned to face him. "Ron!" Harry said, mock-cheerfully.

They stood in silence. "Harry, you know Ronald," Hermione said sheepishly, stuffing her hands in her jean pockets.

"So, you two are fucking?"

"Harry!" Hermione practically shrieked, her eyes widening. Even Weasley blushed. "We're just, hanging out," he finally said, very awkwardly.

"Oh my God," Harry laughed, "I've never seen you this nervous. It's actually sort of cute."

"Oh shut up, you git," Ron said, flustered and getting redder by the second.

"Anyway," Harry said, turning his attention toward Hermione. "Did you get it?" He was impatient.

"Yes," she said nodding. She took out a piece of paper from her pocket. Weasley looked at it, obviously curious, but neither provided an explanation.

"Thanks," Harry said, practically snatching it, and hurrying to his room.

As he went to bed, words spun in his head: Cokeworth, Spinner's End, Severus Snape.

* * *

Harry had to work for a week before he had enough money to take the trip to Cokeworth. He spent most nights drafting a letter that he wasn't even sure he would show the man, that he wasn't even sure the man would read. He rehearsed what he would say, over and over. The letter was inarticulate:

_Dear Severus Snape,_

_I don't deserve the right to have you read this letter, but I love you; sometimes vaguely, at best remotely, but always painfully. That is the only explanation, the only justification, the only excuse. I guess if I could choose one thing I wanted you to know after all of this, it would be that I meant everything. Every word, every moan, every tear. And that every day, I struggle to remember what it was like to touch you, to hear you speak to me. I'm forgetting, and it scares me. The way loving you scares me._

_Trembling and yours,_

_Harry_

What else could he possibly offer?

* * *

The train ride was awful. He could still feel the kiss Hermione had landed on his cheek as she dropped him off at the station. Stop after stop after stop.

"Cokeworth," a lazy, bored man announced on the intercom, and Harry imagined him saying "Your stop, Harry, your fate Harry, good fucking luck, Harry!" As he got out and looked over the gloomy town, mist hanging over the neatly lined, brick buildings, he felt like he needed to be sick. His hands were shaking as he pulled his map out of his rucksack to figure out how far he'd have to walk.

The route was fairly simple, but it took half an hour to reach Spinner's End. Harry wished it would take half an hour more. When Harry finally stood in front of Snape's door, it looked just as he expected it would judging by the view from the train; a house made of solid, brown brick, in the ground to stably that it seemed almost apart of it. There was one window in which Harry was at eye level with, and it was curtained, of course. There were three, small, steps to the door, and for a long time Harry couldn't bring himself to step onto them, thinking they might burn him or swallow him whole, or chew his legs off.

But in three, three steps, one, two, three, he was there, and knocking. His heart pounded him.

Snape opened the door, his face almost shocking a gasp out of Harry. He looked much the same. He was wearing black jeans and a gray, collared shirt. Harry stiffened, waiting for pain.

Snape didn't look surprise. He furrowed his brow and he...laughed. An incredulous laugh.

"Hi," Harry let out.

"Let me guess," Snape said lazily, opening the door a bit more, leaning against the doorjamb. "You were hoping we could talk?"

Harry shivered, finally feeling the cold. Snape seemed unaffected. He didn't, couldn't say anything. Snape stared at him, and pushed the door open even wider with the tips of those long, fluid fingers; an invitation. Harry stepped inside, his heart pounding even harder as he brushed passed Snape.

The door led immediately into a small sitting room. It walls were covered by books entirely, the furniture was old and leather bound. Snape had a fire going, and there was a saucer of half-finished tea on a small table in front of the brown armchair.

"Help yourself to some tea," Snape said. "Might as well, you see, I don't know how long I'll be able to afford it. You can take what's left."

And so it began. Hurt blossomed in between Harry's ribs like an oppressive heat, but it was so, so much, better than the nothingness of the passed six weeks. Snape-less, aching days.

Harry took a deep breath and turned to face him. "I'm so sorry," he said, knowing it sounded pathetic, that it wasn't enough, would never be enough.

"It's quite alright," Snape sneered, his face cruel, hands clasped to the armchair in front of him. "My only regret is that I served time in jail and I didn't even get to fuck you."

Harry's rucksack feel from his shoulder to the floor. His hand, trembling, went to his stomach. Spit gathered in mouth, and he swallowed. He wanted to double over and spit, but his eyes were fastened to Snape.

"Why'd you say that?" his voice managed to hitch out.

"You want so badly to be the victim, I'm just helping your own worthless cause," Snape spat at him, as if he weren't worthy of the words. He was leaning over the armchair, as if he were keeping it between them, keeping from hitting Harry.

Harry gave in, and doubled over. In a flash, Snape was near him, too near, crouched so that his face was in Harry's, centimeter apart. "This is what you wanted me to be," he whispered, a harsh sound that reminded Harry of blood. Snape looked mad, like an enraged animal. "So this is who I will be. Anything to get you out of my SIGHT," Snape yelled, and Harry felt the spittle on his face. "What?" Snape's voice was soft again. "Are you not satisfied? Have I done a bad job?" He looked away from Harry, gesturing to nothing, "Were you expecting to see some semblance of the fool that believed you?"

Snape straightened and moved away from him, and Harry missed him, however terrible and cruel he was, he wanted to be near that face, in those hands that surely bled with want to tear at him, to destroy him.

The next time Harry looked up, Snape was gone, the door that Harry just noticed swinging closed behind him. Harry heard a loud crash, and it propelled him forward rather than scared him.

"You don't understand how badly I feel about what happened," his voice shook. "I don't even know how I did it, it was like it wasn't even me-" He pushed the door, made of painted wood, open and it led into the kitchen, where Snape stood, hands pressed against a table, head hanging, breath short. A chair was lying face down on the floor.

Snape laughed. "Oh, but it was you," he said, not looking at Harry, the cloth over the kitchen table bunched up in his fist now, his rage haunting the room, quiet and dangerous.

Harry pushed on, it was all he had. "After I left Hogwarts, I realised how much I cared about you," he rushed. "I was so confused because I expected you to be like the other men in my life because you just fit the type that I always chase, and when you weren't, I was afraid, I was really fucking scared and I've never cried in my entire life as much as I have in these past two months without you-" Harry nearly lost his breath, lost everything. "You see straight through me," he said, remembering the words from what seemed like a distant path, but he was hopeless.

"Apparently not," Snape said, staring out the window and Harry wished with everything in him that Snape would just glance at him, "You do!" Harry insisted. "I knew I made mistake I made when I couldn't go back to you and tell you how much I hated myself for what I'd done!" Harry could hear the hysterical edge in his voice now.

"You still don't have that privilege," Snape intoned.

"Please, Severus..." Harry begged, coming closer.

"You lost every privilege when you decided to betray me," he said over Harry's plea, finally turning to look at him. "When I first came to Hogwarts, it was with the intention to teach a reckless, irresponsible group of boys that the choices they make have consequences. When I came to know you," he hissed, "it became very clear to me that you had a pattern, and it became my goal to teach you that you had choices."

He stood straighter, coming out of his lean against the kitchen counter, and Harry prayed that he might hold him, but he made no move forward. "You had a choice, Harry," he said, and Harry breathed hitched from the sound of his name coming for Severus's lips, "you made a decision," he stopped and Harry waited, his body caught and hanging on every syllable. "And that decision," he continued, shaking his head slowly, "had consequences."

Then it was quiet...so quiet. Harry stared at the fallen chair, breathing slowly, he looked at the old wall paper, and the brown, wooden cabinets, the sink on his right with the window over it, frosted over with cold, the teapot on the hob, a lone fork on he counter beside it, and the door from which he'd came into this hell of a room, this room where his last pathetic reach for something real and sustainable, for something like love, something valuable, had been rejected and sequestered back into the place inside of him where he had hid it. Not for the first time, he thought of Uncle Vernon and Mr. Bloom and Mr. Crouch, everything flooding back to him, everything he'd denied and thought he could forget, the bruises, that time, being eleven and used, the shame in the sheets. He looked up at Snape, who was staring at him now, and his love hurt inside of him at the sight, and Harry doubted he'd ever forget this as well.

"You know," he said, his voice thick and clumsy, "I said I don't deserve for you to forgive me," he closed his mouth and his eyes and shook his head. "But, you know," he continued, "I do deserve _something_. After everything I've been through, I deserve something!" Snape shook his head, looking speechless. "I always hated when people felt bad for me, even when I felt bad for myself, I hated it. But I'm done being ashamed," Harry said, suddenly feeling powerful. "You taught me that, in your own strange way, you know."

Snape still said nothing. Leaving empty handed seemed imminent. Harry sighed, resigned. "There's just one more thing," he said, and exited the kitchen, going to the sitting room for his rucksack. He heard Snape following him, his footsteps, the door swinging closed behind him. Harry knelt to the floor, opening the rucksack with shaking hands, searching for the letter.

* * *

"Where is it?" Harry mumbled, digging, searching.

Severus watched him, eyes fixed to that narrow back, those knobby elbows, the back of that shaggy head of hair. He watched as the boy slumped, suddenly, over his bag. His hand had stopped moving, all of him had stopped moving. "Oh, no..." he whispered. It was almost like a sob.

Severus wanted to say something, but he was caught in a spell of silence; it would surely hurt too much to speak. The boy raised his head. He turned and rested his back against the armchair. He put his head in his hands. "Fuck," he said softly. "I had...I wrote a letter. I wrote you a letter, and it's- I forgot it. Fuck, of course I forgot it. The universe has been fucking me over since the day I was born, why stop now? Fuck!" he said, louder. His foot stomped the floor, and his hands looked as if they were tearing at his hair.

"You wrote a letter?" Snape broke the silence.

"Yes." Harry's shoulders tensed and relaxed, tensed, and relaxed. Then, he was still.

"And you forgot it?"

Harry laughed, short, harsh. "Yes. Fuck"

Moments ago, Harry was his biggest adversary, the animal to be hunted and killed, the monster. Now, he was a scared little boy, and Severus was the monster that aided him in his disease.

"I owe you an apology as well."

Harry practically gasped and his head shot up to look at Severus. He almost couldn't bear to be under that viridian gaze again. "What?" Confused.

"I'm a monster. I gave in to my desire for you. There is little else in my life I regret more."

"Don't say that," Harry whispered, his head lolling forward and for the first time sounded as if he might cry. "You can say anything else, just don't say that." A pause. "I'm older than I am."

"It's not about your age."

"Then what?" he said, desperately.

"You know what."

Harry sighed heavily, exasperated. "How many times do I have to tell you that you're not like them? That your different? I'm the one who went through it, I would know."

"You can never be sure."

"I've never been more sure of anything."

"It's not fair for me or for you. Just go." The first dismissal. Severus had been waiting to issue it, but hadn't wanted to lose sight of his boy.

Harry's head shook slowly. When he looked up at Severus, there was something in his eye akin to what he'd seen in Harry moments ago, when he'd said those words he knew he'd dream about, _I deserve something._

"No," he said, defiant as ever, and Severus was reminded of those torturous early days of Harry's blatant and proud disrespect. "I'm going to stay here. You can't ask me to leave, I'm not going to let you avoid this. If you want me out, you're going to have to drag me out by my hair.

Severus tensed, ready for battle.


End file.
